


Thursday's Purpose

by DayDaDahlias



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Journalism, Alternate Universe - Mob, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blackmail, Death Threats, Denial of Feelings, Dubious Consent, Dubious consent outside of Brendon/Ryan, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Fear of Death, Fear of Discovery, Friends With Benefits, Gay Panic, Homophobia, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Journalism, M/M, Minor Character Death, Photography, Poker, Prostitution, Protective Ryan Ross, Slow Burn, Threats of Violence, Undercover, Undercover Missions, graveyards for the aesthetic, just... I mean death is a big thing, lots of lying, lots of panic about death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:13:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22410001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayDaDahlias/pseuds/DayDaDahlias
Summary: Ryan should have known better. Or, at the very least, learned how to play poker before he bet his life on it.[Discontinued atm - unfinished/abandoned]
Relationships: Breezy Weekes/Dallon Weekes, Brendon Urie/Dallon Weekes, Cassie Vandenboom/Jon Walker, Pete Wentz/Everyone, Ryan Ross & Jon Walker, Ryan Ross & Spencer Smith, Ryan Ross/Brendon Urie
Comments: 52
Kudos: 20





	1. Ghosts Get Grumpy in Graveyards

**Author's Note:**

> I own none of these people. Only the plot and the mistakes are mine.

Ryan decided—and it was a sure decision this time, no more bouncing around the fact—that if he absolutely _had_ to die, he would like to die on a Thursday in November. 

It was a perfect time, no doubt about it. A colder month—Ryan had always been fond of the cold; it suited him—and not too close to Sunday and not the beginning of the week because that would have been depressing. You can't die at the beginning of the week. 

So Thursday was his day of choice. The perfect day to die. 

Although, it wasn't Thursday when Spencer Smith called him. In fact, it wasn't even November. 

It was a Monday in January when his old best friend rang his phone at four-thirty in the fucking morning and said into the device, barely above a hiss, “Ryan. Buddy.”

Which was a serious cause for concern because Spencer Smith didn’t call him 'buddy' anymore.

Ryan squeezed his eyes shut, slowly pushing himself to sit straight up in bed, holding a hand over his eyes, and he said, out of breath already, “Fuck, Spence, who?”

Names ran through his head. Everyone he’d ever known back home. How many funerals he might be going to. He prayed not Jon. Anyone but Jon.

And then Spencer returned, his voice similarly hushed, “Your old man.”

Ryan swallowed. Opened his mouth. Closed it. Considered. Hey, at least it wasn’t Jon.

“Dead?” he asked, not sure if he feared the answer.

“Down,” Spencer assured.

Ryan whispered, “Goddamn.”

“I know,” Spencer whispered back. He sounded apologetic and Ryan didn't know exactly why. “Fucking cancer man.”

“It gets you,” Ryan agreed. He shifted up in the bed to hunch over, holding the phone between his shoulder and ear. He cracked his back. 

“Yeah,” Spencer said. A long pause. “Y’know, Haley’s mom died of breast cancer.”

Ryan pushed his head to each shoulder, listening to the sounds it made as his neck popped. “Haley?”

“That girl that I was—” Spencer started to explain when it hit Ryan.

A memory of a girl that stood between Spencer and him, glaring whilst she did so. A girl that had stopped him one afternoon, a year after she had started going out with Spencer (if that's what it could be called), stabbed him in the chest with a finger, and said to Ryan, “You watch your fucking back, Ryan Ross, or you’ll be fucking sorry.”

And Ryan had never figured out what for. Not that he couldn’t draw his own conclusions. There was a whole list of things Ryan Ross was liable to be sorry for; he just had to pick and choose at random. 

What had he done wrong to make Spencer's girlfriend so mad? Was he really that threatening?

“Right, yeah, Haley,” Ryan said into the phone, slacking again. “With the brown hair. The short girl. Fake smile, yeah; I remember her. Crazy son of a bitch, that one, good choice, man.”

Spencer let out a nervous laugh. Fear. “Yeah, well, I’m just saying that—”

“People die. Uh-huh.” Ryan looked down at the bedsheets that were pooled in his lap and over the side of the bed. He considered putting on a shirt. He felt rather stupid talking to Spencer on the phone without a shirt on. Not that Spencer knew. Principle of the thing.

His dog, Dottie, was laying at the side of the bed, her head rested on her paws and snoring obnoxiously. For such a small animal, she made a hell of a lot of noise. Ryan grunted in tandem with her and poked himself in the ear. 

“I’m not special; it happens." He moved the fist to his eyes, rubbing. "Boo-hoo. Wah-wah. Good talk, Spence. I really feel consoled here.”

“I wasn’t—” Spencer started to argue; there was panic there; the man was out of his depth.

Ryan asked, continuing to massage his face to will life into it, “You know it’s like four in the morning, man, yeah?”

“Four-thirty.” Came the correction.

“This couldn’t have waited until… I don’t know.” Ryan rolled his head on his shoulders once more, eliciting an audible crack that made him sigh. “At least six?”

Spencer sounded as though he were at a loss. “I figured you woulda wanted to know. ‘Bout your dad.”

Ryan picked at the covers in his lap. Kept wondering if he should grab a shirt. He probably wouldn't be going back to sleep, anyhow. Not at this rate. “I guess.”

“Your dad is dead, Ryan.” Spencer made a croak from the back of his throat. “You heard me, didn’t you? He’s—I mean, dead, man. As in _dead_ dead.”

“Cancer,” Ryan replied. “Yeah, I got it. It gets you. I got it.”

Spencer waited to say, drawn-out and uneasy, “So, you’re…?”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “I’ll come back for the funeral, yeah, yeah. Of course I’ll come back to town. I’m not a total asshole, y’know. I'm his son. I've got obligations, I've got it."

“Right…” Spencer seemed to be nodding to himself. “Seems like you’ve got it all.”

Ryan felt himself redden slightly. Embarrassment probably, if it could be called that. He directed his eyes at Dottie asleep on his floor. She snored. “Was that all, Spence? Cause it’s kinda four-thirty in the fucking morning here and I’m—Well, y’know my dad’s dead; I should be allowed time to mourn.”

Spencer sighed. “You mean sleep.”

“Yeah,” Ryan admitted, “I mean sleep.”

“Uh, sure, man, I—” Spencer took a breath. “You’re taking this really… I mean, you don’t sound—”

“It’s been seven years,” Ryan responded bluntly. “It isn’t like he just died today, y’know.”

Audible confusion from Spencer. Ryan pictured him reeling back, furrowing his brows. “No, I-I don’t know. He _did_ just die today. Like five hours ago, tops.”

“I’m saying the man died seven years ago and we’re just now celebrating it. Don’t act like it’s some tragedy.” He paused, letting his voice soften. “But it was nice of you to call, Spencer. I appreciate it.”

Spencer fumbled, “Oh, uh, yeah. Of course.”

“I’ll see you, maybe, when I’m there. You’ll be at the funeral so…” Ryan shrugged. “We can like… go out for drinks or something. Shoot the crap.”

“Like old times,” Spencer agreed. Ah, old times. There was a phrase. Ryan scowled to himself. _Old times, my ass._

“Sure.” He chuckled, his throat feeling scratchy. “Like old times… If I come.”

Spencer seemed instantly upset as he argued, “I thought you said—”

“Eh, I never tell the truth. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” Ryan smiled. “Who’s to say.”

“It’s your dad, Ryan,” Spencer reminded. The age-old guilt trip. Spencer Smith was the same man he was two years ago. The same goddamn man. 

“ _Was_ my dad,” Ryan corrected, just to be mean. “Nighty night now, Spencey, I’d like to sleep.”

“Ryan, you can’t just—” _Run away from this. Ignore that this happened. Be a coward._ Except that he could. He completely could and that was exactly what he would be doing. 

“What was that?” Ryan asked, raising his voice. “Sorry, you’re uh-you’re breaking up, man. I can’t—”

“Ryan.” A warning.

“I can’t hear you," Ryan lied through a sing-song voice. "Night, Spence. It was good to hear from you though! Maybe you can call in the morning sometime.”

“ _Ryan_ ,” the voice came again, pleading. 

“I said night now, Spencer!”

And Ryan hung the phone back up, holding it down into the receiver harshly with a hand. Apparently, however, he had slammed it down too hard because Dottie was awake a moment later, her droopy ears raised and her head cocked to the side to stare at him in the darkness of his bedroom.

Ryan grimaced, pulling away from the phone and tucking his hands back into his lap.

“Sorry, Dot,” he apologized, trying to sound soothing, although his voice had a tremor beneath the words. Why was that? He wasn't upset. He was absolutely not upset. No reason to be. The man died seven years ago. Now his body was simply being put into storage. That’s all it was. “Go back to bed, baby. I’m sorry.”

Dottie put her head on the wooden floorboards once again and snorted out a sigh. It wouldn't take long for her to fall back into peaceful darkness. 

Ryan flexed and unflexed his fists in his lap.

Who the hell did Spencer Smith think he was, calling Ryan up after two years? A good friend, probably. Well, screw him. Ryan didn’t need good friends. He had never needed friends. It would do Spencer Smith well to remember that. When Ryan went back to Downpour, he would be sure to tell him.

Go back to Downpour. 

He had to go back to Downpour. How the hell was he meant to go back to Downpour? He had made such a fuss about leaving in the first place. What would everyone say about him? Oh, he couldn't even imagine. 

"Dammit," he said, rubbing at his forehead. "Dottie? Dammit, Dottie."

He looked down at his sleeping dog. 

"I mean, damn for real." He laughed to himself, wiping both hands down his face. He took a moment to breathe. "I need to put my shirt on."

So his father was dead then. 

Sucked. 

He clambered out of bed, careful not to accidentally wake Dottie again and moved to collect his shirt and a suitcase.

"Dot," he said, though he doubted she was listening. "I've gotta go home."

Dottie snored. 

"Not here home," he continued on, "old home. You never went. It's good though. Wasn't great…. It was good enough. But uh... I've got to go back."

He shuffled through his dresser drawers, collecting a collared shirt.

"Won’t be gone too long. Not any longer than I've gotta, but uh... Yeah, but I've still gotta go." He turned around, holding his shirt to his chest, smiling hopefully. "That alright by you, Dot?"

His dog stayed sleeping. He sighed, dropping his arms to his side. His voice was tired. 

"Yeah. I figured it was."

His father died. Was dead. The old man. Cancer. Ryan was getting a headache. Why had Spencer even bothered to call? Ryan could have heard it from someone else. Someone like…

God, he needed to get some friends. 

Now what was Ryan supposed to do? Come crawling back to Downpour, just as unsuccessful as he went away? What would people say about that? _Just like his father._

Ryan didn’t think he could stand much more of that. All that talk about being like his father. It was getting redundant. 

Ryan was not, for the record, ‘just like his father.’ His father—God damn the man—wasn’t anything like him. Wasn’t _half_ the man that Ryan Ross had turned out to be. And Ryan had proof of that. Spencer Smith had ensured him of it when they were both drunk off their asses, at that one bar that one night that Ryan and Spencer didn’t talk about if they didn’t have to. 

When Ryan had slurrenly asked him—because he really had wanted to know at the time—and Spencer had assured him in a dripping voice, “Absolutely. Not half the man you are. Not half the goddamn man, Ryan; don’t you worry about it.”

Ryan wasn’t positive he really believed it—Spencer told a lot of lies—but he liked to pretend at least. Pretend that he was a better man than that. 

All he had to do was keep repeating that to himself and then one day it might be true. Perhaps he could make a song about it. Something to help him remember. 

_I’m a better man. I’m a better man than my father. I’m a better man._

He couldn’t think of a good rhyme for it. _What rhymes with ‘man’ anyway? Tan? Fan? Ban?_ He hated words. He hated rhyming and writing. And, worst of all, he hated that he hadn’t been able to compose a single decent thing since that Monday in January when Spencer called him. 

Ryan grumbled to himself as he trudged his way through the cemetery, over dead grass and flaky petals, his thoughts wandering to places they didn’t need to wander. Oh, what a life, what a world, he was bored out of his goddamn mind.

Once he reached it—not too long a walk, it was only about half a mile from the gate, toward the top of the hill—he ran a hand over the ridge of the headstone— _George Ross_ —and patted it awkwardly. 

It wasn’t his father. Not yet, anyhow. 

The grave he strolled around belonged to his grandfather. He had never met the man, but he liked the grave. When he was young, he had made fun by walking up to it on certain days—Mondays and Thursdays mostly, when the temptation was too great—and standing there, staring at the headstone with his own name written on the front. 

He thought that when the right Thursday finally came and he got his own gravestone, he would request in his will that the tomb say ‘Ryan’ and not ‘George.’ But, the realization was steadily dawning on him that the only person in the world who would object to that had died on a Monday in January. So really, he could have his tombstone say whatever the hell he wanted. 

Could make some sort of joke about it, if he really wanted to. Say something clever.

_Here Lies Ryan Ross — Asshole._

_Ryan Ross — The One Who Had a Chance and Didn’t Make It._

_Ryan Ross — A Better Man Than His Father, Honest._

He hoped that he would be out of his writer’s block by the time his death rolled around. He needed to have his will ready to go when he dropped. And, better yet, he needed to have his speech prepared for the funeral. 

His father dropped dead on the third Monday of January. Two weeks prior to Ryan Ross’s excursion to the cemetery and seven years after his last visit. He went often enough before the death of his father though. The man wasn’t special enough to elicit a new habit. Well, when he still lived in town. He hadn’t for a long, long time. Got out of dodge the first chance he got. 

He used to go to the graveyard all the time when he was younger. Something about the place was soothing, serene. 

“Okay,” Ryan declared, tapping a beat across the top of the grave with his fingers. The cold February air curled around him and he regretted not bringing his gloves. “Okay, Grandpa, hi. I know it’s been a while. Like… well, a while. I don’t think it matters how long exactly. But—in that time—I’ve managed to do some thinking. I know, shocking. But I’ve had my time to think, and I’ve decided something.”

The slab of rock blinked back at him in the glint of the sun off the frozen grass. Ryan’s boots left imprints in the yellowish blades, creating a path up to the headstone. 

“I’ve decided,” he said, “that if I’ve gotta die—and it’s becoming apparent now that I probably do; death is sort of _there_ , isn’t it? Waiting. I think I’m gonna do it on a Thursday. Y’know? What’d you think about that, old man? A Thursday in November; it’ll be fucking gorgeous. Sounds swell to me.”

He paused, directing his eyes to the ground and shaking his head. He ran his red fingertips over his face, feeling their warmth compared to the cold air around him. He should have brought gloves. He had left them in his car, parked about a mile away at the base of the hill, near where the gate was. 

Where the hell was the sun at? He was freezing. 

“ _Swell_?” he repeated. “Who the hell says ‘swell’ anymore? No one, that’s who. Good God, I’m losing my mind. I’m losing my goddamn mind.”

He let out a shaky breath and massaged his forehead, pinching at the bridge of his nose. Life was getting much too confusing at that point. He was getting tired of it all. God, he was getting so tired. Thursday couldn’t come soon enough. Not that he was going to do anything rash. Ryan Ross wasn’t the sort of man to be bold. 

“Your son died,” Ryan mumbled, keeping his hand clasped over his eyes so he didn’t have to look at his grandfather’s gravestone. “Two weeks ago now. The ceremony— _ceremony_ , like it’s a wedding; you idiot—the _funeral_ is a few days from now. Or, well, it’s supposed to be. There’s a lot of planning between here and there. And a lot of fucking money that I don’t have. I have to like—I have to make this speech or something for it. Or, uh, I don’t _have_ to but don’t I though? I mean, I’m the man’s son for God’s sake. I’m the man’s _only_ son. I can’t very well sit there in the front row and when they say, ‘Hey, Ross Jr., care to say a few words about your old man?’ I just keep my ass in the chair and go, ‘Oh nah, I’m alright. Maybe next time.” 

He hit himself in the face several times, chastising. 

“There won’t be a next time. This is the only time. And I gotta think of something good to say, goddammit.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut. Pried them open again. Watched the black dots dancing across his vision. 

The tomb stayed the same. No help at all. 

Ryan needed some sleep. Felt more like a dead man than his father. And his father was a rotting corpse in a casket while they tried to plan a funeral. 

He hadn’t even called Spencer to tell him he was in town. He had packed his bags, everything he needed and loved except for Dottie who was staying with a close friend of his—Keltie, and her own beagle Hobo—until he got back. 

He tapped the dead grass with the toe of his boot. Ryan missed his dog. 

Perhaps Jon had a dog? He was staying with Jon while he was in Downpour; there wasn’t anyone else he could go to. Not that he had actually told Jon that. Jon didn’t know Ryan was in town either, but that was the plan at least. Besides, Jon Walker was too good a man to deny anyone anything. Ryan was counting on that.

“So… I’m thinking that I will—during the speech—” Ryan said to the grave, trying to get back on track. “Say that my dad was… y’know he wasn’t awful.”

The grave blinked at him. 

“God, you’re right.” Ryan sighed. “He was fucking terrible.” 

He dragged a hand down his face and placed the other on the top of the grave, hunching over barely. He covered his eyes so he couldn’t see anything but the blackness of his blue palm. 

“Hello, friends and… and friends,” he started, trying to think it through. “I am… Ryan Ross—No, no. I am not. I am George Ross the third… and… and I fucking suck at speeches.”

He wet his lips. Pictured sitting on his couch with his legs up on the coffee table in his socks and Dottie laying on the couch next to him, head on her paws. He imagined the warmth that his home provided and cradling a notebook in his lap as he tried to write something worth saying. 

What would he write about his father? For the life of him, he couldn’t conjure a thing. 

Maybe some heartfelt poetry. Or… Nothing heartfelt to say about that man. Heart- _absent_ poetry. Could be nice if done right. 

“Alright. So… so here’s how it goes… Dearly beloved—Wait, no, that’s wrong. Guys. Yeah sure, I’ll go with guys. Guys. Okay. _Guys_ , we are gathered here today—Fuck.” He raked a hand back through his hair. “We’re here today to celebrate the loss of a man who we never really had so this is all pretty fucking stupid, I won’t lie, but you all spent good money on your suits twenty years ago when you bought them for your prom and you’ve been meaning to wear them to show off that you can still fit into them so I’m sorry I’m stepping on your moment.”

He took a heaving breath. 

“And-and I’m not even wearing a suit because I don’t have the money to buy one, because, as you all know, I left town about seven years ago to pursue my dreams or some shit and guess what? It didn’t work. You were all right. Everyone was right. Including him.” 

Ryan pointed to an invisible casket in the frozen grass. 

“The old man warned me, y’know. Said not to do it because my words weren’t worth shit and I wasn’t either but I said, ‘fuck you, dad, I’m doing it.’”

He threw his hands up. 

“But here I am. Back where I started. And the dead bastard was right. I’m nothing. I can’t even afford a goddamn suit. Who the hell knows where I got the money for this funeral.”

Ryan thought a moment before focusing back on the fake audience.

“Probably Jon. He pays for things when I make him feel bad. Maybe I cried in front of him. That always works. You know I can cry on command, Grandad? I’m really fucking good at it. I should cry now. To make you think I care.”

He made a mental note of that. _Cry at the funeral. Make them think you care, you heartless bastard._

“My dad was…” Ryan exhaled. “He was a good guy… I guess. He kept me alive, didn’t he? All you can ask from a parent. So I guess he did alright. Best he could.” 

He stared blankly at his grandfather’s gravestone and the gravestone stared right back, just as blank.

“God, you have no idea,” he said, waving a hand. “You’re a fucking rock. I’m talking to a fucking rock. I’m insane.”

He held both hands over his face once more.

“Okay, okay. One more time. Let me try one more time, okay?” 

He didn’t know why he was reasoning with a tombstone. But he was. He didn’t know why he was doing a lot of the things he was doing. But he was doing them. 

He was so tired. 

He made another mental note. _Get some coffee when you leave here. Oh, get Jon to make some for you._

He could come in all red-faced and shaky and say something along the lines of, ‘Oh, Jon. Jon, my friend. My _brother_. I don’t mean to come to you but I-I haven’t anywhere else to go. My father. He has passed on. God bless you, Jonathan. Help thine brother. Feed me thy coffee that thou make so fantastically. And a blanket sir, please. Thy cannot feel thine fucking feet.’

He laughed aloud to himself at his own joke.

“Wait, no.” He smacked himself mentally. “C’mon Ross. Speech, speech. Plan a goddamn speech.”

He tapped himself on both cheeks with his frigid palms a few times to turn them pinker, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. He could do that. He could. He was a fucking writer, after all. He should know how to compose a speech to his dead father. Even if none of it was true. 

“Friends,” he said. “Family. I’m glad to see that all of you could make it… I know that… I know that my father didn’t exactly have many close friends. People that cared about him. But he didn’t expect you to care. I hope you understand that. Your kindness, your worry, it didn’t matter to him. George Ross needed no one to like him but himself. And I-I loved him for it.”

The words were bitter. Lies, lies, lies. Oh, how he loved the lies. That was the only truth Ryan Ross was capable of telling. 

“My father was not a bad man. But he did not burden himself with being good. He did his best to raise me alone. My mother… She didn’t make it easy on him. For the first years of my life, she was hardly around and then for the rest… Well, for the rest, she never was. It’s hard you know. For a man to raise a son alone.”

He imagined the women in the audience dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs.

“And my father did the best he could with what he was allowed. Of what he was capable. And he may not have made me a good man, that is something I have to do myself but he…” Pause for dramatic effect. Wipe away a fake tear. “He made me a better one.”

Even though he wasn’t half the man Ryan was. Spencer Smith knew. Everyone knew. Ryan was spewing bullshit. It tasted good. Lemon words. Zesty.

“I’ll miss him.” Ryan crossed his chest and heart dramatically. “May God bless you, Dad. Good luck in the sky.”

_Good luck trying to get there._

“I’ll miss you, old man.” He blew a kiss to the grey clouds. 

_Not even a little._

Ryan smiled, looking back at the grave. “Not that bad, huh, for a first try?”

The sudden, booming applause came from his left and Ryan lurched forward in alarm. 

“What the hell?” he cried, grabbing the head of the tomb, and flipping around to find a man standing across from him, beside another grave—one with a stone cherub on top—grinning at Ryan widely. 

He kept banging his hands together, snickering. 

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” the man said, humor evident. “That was fucking gorgeous, my man, I mean fantastic performance. I really believed it. Felt it in my fucking bones.”

He touched his heart with a hand wrapped in a smooth leather glove. Ryan flicked his eyes to it. Took notes in his head. 

_Rich, rich. The crazy, clapping fucker’s rich._

Ryan looked back up, the man still smiling at him. Leering. He took inventory of the man’s features. 

A white male, he thought, maybe twenty-five or so. 

His eyes were big and round but they were hooded, dazed. Probably high or drunk… or maybe tired. The cold made people lethargic sometimes. Ryan felt as though he was about to drop. Maybe the man shared the same conundrum. 

His nose was wider but not large. His lips though, fucking huge. They were wrapped around his smile of straight white teeth—probably naturally straight, the asshole—and they were good looking. He was a good looking guy, no doubt about it. Maybe not Ryan’s type, but still very attractive. Especially with that thick black hair, windswept and messy. Practically irresistible. 

He wore a long black coat, nearly long enough to scrape the frozen grass beside his black boots and _oh, would you look at that._

Scuffed boots. Dirty. Not rich. No, no. Those were farm boots. Re-evaluate then. He wasn’t rich, the boots said that, and the worn jeans he was clad in, the fabric faded to a light blue. The man’s shirt was a collared button-up, simple. A poor man’s shirt, certainly. But the coat… the black, glossy coat and the leather gloves with white fur peeking from their insides—rabbit hair gloves—different story. 

Interesting. 

Ryan was interested. 

“Well—” He straightened up from the grave, dusting off his own shirt. A poor man’s shirt but Ryan lacked the gloves and the coat to even it out. He was just a poor man talking to a grave; nothing fun about that. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” the man said with a dip of his head, falsely elegant. “But maybe you should keep working. Needs a tweak or two if you know what I mean.”

“Ha,” Ryan coughed out. “Sure. Good input.”

“I do what I can,” the man replied. 

There was a moment or two of silence when the man shifted his hands into his coat pockets and Ryan kept staring at him, trying to figure this interaction out. The silence was growing rather terrifying.

Ryan said, hoping to maintain a jovial tune, “Thank you for your service to the community and all us graveyard lurkers.”

“Lurkers?” the man chorused, his wide lips shifting back from his grin into a frown. “I didn’t figure that.”

“What’d you figure then?” Ryan wanted to know. 

“Oh.” The man tucked his coat over the button up as though he was cold. He looked rich again. Chameleon. “Figured you were a ghost.”

Ryan straightened, alarmed. 

The rich-poor man was insane. Holy shit, Ryan had been back in town for two hours and he was about to be slaughtered in a graveyard by a man with scuffed boots and rabbit fur gloves. Holy shit. He couldn’t die. He had a speech to give, dammit. It wasn’t even Thursday! 

The man laughed abruptly. It was loud. A bold laugh, sweet but thundering. Ryan trained his ears to remember it. 

“I’m kidding you know,” the man said. “Loosen up, buddy. Can’t give a funeral speech when you’re twisted like a spring.”

“I’m not twisted,” Ryan replied. “I’m just on edge because people don’t usually talk to me in graveyards and accuse me of being a ghost.”

“I didn’t accuse you of anything.” The man had gone back to smiling. A perky little spit-fuck, wasn’t he?

“You said—”

“I said I _figured_ you were a ghost,” the man said, holding tightly onto his coat to keep it closed. “Never accused you of it. I didn’t point a finger and say, ‘ah, you there! Ghost!’”

Ryan grumbled, shifting on his feet. “You might as well have.”

“You’re a bit dramatic, you know,” the man teased, swaying back and forth on his own feet. As if he had to keep moving.

Ryan gawked. “Alright, what the hell? I’m sorry, who are you and why are you berating me in a cemetery. I have just lost my father, okay? I don’t need this shit.”

The man rolled his eyes. “You can only use the ‘my father’s dead’ card so many times. Shouldn’t waste one on me. I’m just a stranger.”

“Exactly!” Ryan waved a hand at him. “You’re a stranger and you’re talking to me. Why? What the hell’s happened to this town? You don’t talk to strangers!”

“You come from the city, don’t you?” the man asked abruptly. 

Ryan paused. “What?”

“The city.” He dipped his head. “You’ve come from the city. You look like it, too. I can smell the grease on you from here. Downpour, I bet.”

Technically, what the man was smelling was ink, but Ryan didn’t correct him. He also didn’t say that he wasn’t from Downpour directly, he was coming from Esteban. 

Ryan blinked. “Yeah, of course I do. We’re in Downpour right now, what’re you—”

“We’re on the outskirts of Downpour,” the man informed, raising a finger before laying his palm flat in the air to skate it over an imaginary current. “Riding the line, baby. Rules aren’t the same in the graveyard. Not on my side of the line.”

Ryan narrowed his eyes. The man had to be insane. “What’s your side of the line?”

“Freemont,” the man answered, dropping his hands to his sides. 

Ryan made a small ‘o’ with his mouth. 

He knew Freemont. He had never actually been out there though; there wasn’t much to see. Just a bunch of cow pastures and trees and ugly, badly painted farmhouses. Rickety wells and no electricity. No wonder the guy was wearing poor clothes. He came from Freemont. He was basically a free _loader_ in this cemetery.

“Then what’re you doing here?” Ryan asked, trying not to let the disgust seep into his voice. “Don’t you people bury your dead in cow shit or something? Burn ‘em in the hay bales to feed to horses?”

To Ryan’s surprise, the man didn’t seem offended. Instead, he cackled, loud. Ryan flinched back.

“My parents are buried here,” the man informed when he finished, subsiding to a chuckle. “They’re from Downpour. Not me.”

Ryan swallowed. Should he have felt guilty about that? “Oh.”

The man couldn’t seem to quit smiling. What the hell was there to smile about? Ryan didn’t get this.

“You know,” the man said as if he had realized something, all thoughtful and understanding. “You strike me as being a bit of a bitch, sir.”

Ryan’s jaw dropped. What was wrong with strangers these days? He blubbered, “I am not—”

“Uh, I think you are.” The man cocked his head, mocking a sympathetic expression, pouting those fat lips out. “Something the matter, honey? You wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t _know_ you!” Ryan exclaimed. 

“I’m Brendon,” the man—Brendon, apparently—said back, toneless. He touched his chest again. “Now, c’mon, tell me about your hopes, dreams, and aspirations, Ghost. What keeps you up at night? What about your past life makes you haunt innocent mourners such as myself?” 

“If anything,” Ryan snapped back. “You’re haunting me.”

“Eh.” ‘Brendon’ waved a rabbit-gloved hand. “Just depends on which side of the graveyard you’re on.”

Ryan couldn't believe this interaction was actually taking place. Maybe he had hit his head or something. Drank too much the night before. Any other explanation besides a poor man with big lips and rabbit-fur gloves on the other side of a graveyard calling him a ghost.

“I’m flattered really,” Brendon carried on with no invitation, “that of all the lonely hearts in the world, you picked mine to pick at.”

“You talked to me first,” Ryan reminded. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Except that you did.” Brendon cocked a hip. “Can’t very well talk to yourself in a graveyard and expect no one to take notice.”

Ryan tried not to laugh. Had to keep up appearances.

“Besides, the speech needed some help,” Brendon added.

“Hey!” Ryan said, and the corner of his lips quirked up. “The speech was good!”

Brendon returned. “Jeez, didn’t know ghosts were so touchy these days.”

“I’m not a ghost. I fucking well said I’m not a ghost.”

“Okay, okay.” Brendon held up his hands in surrender and his smile didn’t falter for a second. “We get it. You’re a man. A full-fledged human. God bless you, sir, you’re alive.”

Ryan scowled at him. "Yes, I'm alive. Are you?"

It wasn't a very good response and Brendon pulled a face to prove it. He folded his arms. "I am."

"And you're from Freemont," Ryan added. 

"Uh-huh."

"And your name is Brendon." He counted the phrase on his fingers. 

"Urie," the man answered.

"Urie?" Ryan asked. 

"Last name," Brendon said. "My full name is Brendon Urie."

"Brendon Urie from Freemont," Ryan strung together. 

"Alive and well." Brendon’s grin was far too happy. "That please you, Ghost?"

Ryan scoffed, shaking his head. "No comment."

"No comment?" Brendon chorused. "What are you? Some professional type?"

Ryan straightened to stand slightly taller. "Some could say that."

"You _want_ people to say that." Brendon nodded like he knew anything. "You're trying to be a professional type."

Ryan glared. "You act like you know a lot."

"I do know a lot,” Brendon said.

Ryan inclined his head. "Well, let's hear it. What all do you know if you know so much?"

"Well," Brendon said. "I know that's your granddad you're standing in front of. I know your dad's dead, you're his only kid, and you gotta make a speech. Your mom’s either gone or she's dead. Dad's the only family you got left. Except _you_ left _him_. Moved on to some other town to follow your dream or some shit." Brendon seemed all too eager to ask the following question. "What was the dream? Acting? Music? Writing?"

"Writing," Ryan answered quietly. 

"How fun," Brendon purred. "You any good?"

"At what? Writing?" Ryan frowned. "I'm as good as I need to be."

"So, pretty bad."

Ryan snorted. "Yeah, I'm pretty bad."

Brendon threw his head back to laugh. His collar rose up his neck but the wind curled it away and Ryan could see his jugular and the stubble on his jaw. It didn't seem a stylistic choice. Almost as though he didn't have time to shave. 

"Let me try you," Ryan offered, watching the way Brendon’s throat moved when he laughed. 

"Try my what?" Brendon inquired and his eyebrow raised. 

"Guess your life story."

"I didn't guess," Brendon corrected, "I eavesdropped."

"You're in a graveyard midday in the middle of the week," Ryan started, "so you're either skipping out on your job to bother mourners, you work at night, or you're unemployed."

"Work at night," Brendon answered. 

"What do you do?" Ryan asked. 

"What is this?" Brendon jeered. "A date?"

Ryan looked him over carefully. "Just a ghost asking some questions. No harm, right?"

"Depends on what you're going to do with the answers," came Brendon's reply. "Who're you planning on selling them to, Mr. Writer? The newspaper?"

"Please," Ryan said. "What newspaper wants to print that story?"

Brendon's sneer was snakelike and his big eyes flashed dark. "You'd be surprised."

Ryan squinted his eyes. "You famous in Freemont or something?"

"Or something."

"Am I talking to a criminal?" Ryan asked and there was something exciting about the quandary. Although he doubted it. Brendon didn't give off very criminal vibes. Obnoxious and an asshole, sure, but nothing evil. 

"No, no," Brendon assured, patting a rabbit fur glove over his chest. "I'm a good boy."

Ryan laughed in surprise. Waited until it subsided to go on with his curiosities. "You work at night in Freemont but you're not a criminal. What other jobs go at night?"

"I can't give you all the answers, Ghost,” Brendon reprimanded. “You're supposed to be a writer, aren't you? Make something up."

Ryan instantly resigned himself to the task. Building Brendon Urie a life. Couldn't be that hard. You could tell a lot by a man based on what gloves and boots he wore. And, of course, where he was from. Could tell a lot about a Freemont Fucker right off the bat. 

"You got fired recently. That's why you're in the graveyard visiting your parents. Something's gotta be bad, right?" Ryan asked. "Because you're not crying and you're definitely not new to this. They've been dead a while."

The last sentence was posed closer to a question than a statement and Ryan gave Brendon a hopeful look that insinuated he should fill in that part of the story. But Brendon didn't offer anything. Only raised his brow, smile faltering, as he listened to the tales Ryan spun about him.

"You either lost a house, a job, or... No one died, you'd be crying." Ryan looked him over. "You seem the kind to cry."

"I'm an emotional guy," Brendon said. "No harm in that."

"A job, I bet," Ryan decided. "Am I right?"

"No," Brendon replied. "But I appreciate the effort."

Ryan threw his hands up dramatically. "Damn! Really thought I had you figured out."

"Eh, you weren't so wrong. Points for trying." Brendon's teeth were shiny white. What a good smile the man had. 

"Thanks," Ryan returned. 

Brendon dipped his head, a formal bow of sorts and Ryan wondered what was wrong with this man. What could possibly explain the way he acted. No. The way he _existed_. Well-spoken but there was an accent lacing his words. Freemont Fuckers. Hicks, the whole lot of them. Anyone from Downpour, Esteban, anywhere nearby, knew what dunces the Freemont Fuckers were. 

Ryan's father had made sure to tell him to stay away from them at all costs. Stay on his side of the line. Spencer Smith's family had taught the same and Jon Walker had explained that even he wouldn't dare touch them. 

But this man—the stalker in the graveyard—didn't seem so dangerous. He had a good smile on him that hardly left his face and his eyes were soft when they gazed on Ryan. Not to mention, he was funny. And, if Ryan were being honest, he liked him. 

"Alright," Brendon said, breaking Ryan from his train of thought. He was peering at Ryan oddly and Ryan cursed himself. He must have been staring while he thought it through. "It's about time for me to get going."

Ryan felt an odd disappointment at that. "Got someplace to be?"

Those soft eyes flickered as they caught Ryan's gaze. "Guess you could say that."

The man seemed to be made of secrets. Ryan liked that especially. He was a writer; he was built on lies. What story could Brendon Urie have to tell? Ryan bet whatever it was, it was worth writing. 

"It was good to meet you, Ghost." 

Brendon turned then as if he were going to leave, and Ryan watched. He had questions. Many, many questions and no answers. All he had was _Brendon Urie_ : Freemont Fucker, night job, dead parents, had a thing for ghosts. That wasn't enough to tell a decent story. 

He opened his mouth; he didn't know exactly what he planned to say but he was going to say something. Maybe just his name. Maybe just to say, _it's not Ghost, it's Ryan_ but nothing came out. 

Brendon flipped back around. Creased his brow thoughtfully as though he was going to say something worthwhile. Ryan waited for the revelation. 

Brendon pointed a finger at him. "But you can't do the speech."

Ryan reeled back. Shook his head and leaned forward to make sure he heard it right. "Sorry?"

"You can’t give that speech,” Brendon reiterated, furrowing his brow, all contemplative and mockingly preaching. “No one’ll take it serious if you do. You can’t bullshit something like that, buddy.”

Ryan didn’t like when people called him buddy.

Brendon poked himself in the chest. “Gotta come from the heart, man. Right from that main muscle.”

“Organ,” Ryan corrected.

Brendon clicked his tongue. “I prefer the piano.”

Ryan took in a sharp breath at the joke and Brendon cracked a smirk.

“Just speak from the heart, huh?” he offered. “And it’ll work out fine. Don’t plan something like that. You can't. Parents only die once, right? Gotta make it special."

He flashed a wink and Ryan's lips twitched. He hesitated to ask, "You give a speech to yours?"

Brendon's ever-present grin fumbled, although he was quick to force it back on. 

Ryan's fingertips were itching to grab a pencil. 

"Yeah," Brendon told him, "I said a word or two."

"Spoke from the heart?" 

Brendon pressed his lips together. "Sure. Right from my piano."

Ryan swayed his head back and forth. “I can't. Do that. Speak from the heart, I can’t."

“Why not?” Brendon asked, standing carefully like a statue. His smile was of interest and his eyes were ever so soft. 

“I’m dead, remember?” Ryan said, feeling an odd sensation in his stomach. Something of elation at the prospect of making a good joke. “Ghosts don’t have hearts.”

Brendon scoffed, surprised with the phrase, and his neck bent back again as it had originally. His collar fussed with the wind as he exclaimed, clapping his gloves together once to elicit a dull smack, “Fantastic! I love it!”

Ryan grinned himself, chuckling into the cold air. His breath parted in gusts of fog. His fingertips were growing numb. Even if he had a pencil, it wouldn't have been any good. He wouldn't have been able to get a single lie out. 

Ryan couldn't say anything else to that. It had been said. And he couldn't just blurt his name out at that point. Not when they were exchanging goodbyes. Although, Brendon didn't say goodbye so explicitly. He only flashed that smile with those soft eyes and waved his gloved hand once. 

And then he had pocketed both hands, hunched his shoulders, and walked away, taking his secrets and his stories with him.

Ryan's fingers didn't stop itching. He flexed them to try and get the feeling back. He took a breath. 

Placed a hand back onto his grandfather’s gravestone to brace himself. The stone would have been frigid had his fingers not already tinted blue. He felt like he was halfway to falling over.

“What the fuck was that?” he asked behind him to the grave.

It didn’t say anything back.

“Oh, what would we know.” Ryan waved a hand at the tomb. “We’re just a couple ghosts, anyhow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates on this fic will be sporadic at best. I'm a fast writer but, just a heads up, there is no schedule until I make one. That being said, chances are all updates will be within one to two weeks. 
> 
> I originally wrote most of this fic during Nanowrimo of 2019 so right now it is about shuffling through the trash and finding the (if any) treasure. We'll see what I come up with!
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'm excited to write more!


	2. Bored as a Bullet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pacing myself is surprisingly hard.
> 
> Also, I'm such a big fan of multiple perspectives. It may be my brand.
> 
> Exposition!

Brendon Urie knew living. And, for the record, he was very good at it. 

He had discovered at a young age that not everyone who was alive was any good at actually living. But Brendon? Brendon was. He knew life. Inside and out. He knew how to gain pleasure from life, he knew how to bask in sadness or anger or pain, he knew how to make it and he knew how to keep it at bay. 

Brendon Urie knew life because he knew people. Brains were weird, he would admit that. But there was no odder mind than his own, and that made deconstructing human behavior far less complicated.

And when you really sat down by yourself at one in the morning to discover the secrets of the universe, if you were high or perhaps just extremely tired, it wasn't that hard. 

It had taken Brendon all but three hours to answer every question that had ever been asked of him or God. 

Or well, almost.

"Chicken Carbonara or that spinach one with the cream sauce?"

"What?" 

Brendon glanced up from where he was on the porch swing, rocking back and forth with his book clasped in hand. He didn't remember the title and if he was being honest, he hadn't actually been reading it. More picking out key words and stringing them together to create his own story in his head. 

Dallon was standing in front of the swing, arms folded over his chest, eyebrow cocked. 

"I said," he repeated—almost condescendingly which Brendon wasn’t so fond of— "That I want to make chicken for tonight's dinner, so what type of chicken do I make; do I make the Carbonara—y'know the one with the wine sauce and the mushrooms that you like so much—or do I make the spinach one with that cream sauce?"

"I—" Brendon blinked. Tried to comprehend any of what Dallon had just said to him. It hadn't sounded to him like English. He shook his head. "I... uh... I mean, does it really matter?"

Dallon exhaled through his nose. "Yes, Brendon, it _matters_."

Brendon stared up at his friend, at those tired blue eyes and hard frown etched into his features. He looked like a disaster; had the man even slept? Brendon swallowed, letting out a nervous laugh. "You're gonna kill me—"

Dallon’s blue eyes twitched. "Most likely."

Brendon fixed on his best smile. The one that said _please don’t be mad, I’m so sweet and handsome, how can you ever be mad at me?_ "Why does it matter?"

Dallon gave another loud groan, this time tilting his head back to stare at the porch ceiling. He reached up to dig his fingers into his eye sockets. "Please, God, tell me you didn't forget."

"Of course I didn't forget!" Brendon exclaimed, even though he had, of course, forgotten. 

"It's dinner tonight," Dallon said, appearing almost desperate. 

"I know that," Brendon snapped. 

"With...?" Dallon gestured with one of his hands for Brendon to complete the sentence. 

Brendon bobbed his head to the same rhythm. "With..."

"You have no idea.”

"I have no idea."

Dallon let out a small shout and mimed strangling Brendon with his hands. Brendon only smiled sheepishly in response. 

"Sorry?" he suggested. 

"Dinner," Dallon seethed. "We are having an important dinner tonight with my wife."

"Ex-wife," Brendon reminded instantly, which Dallon ignored as he so often did. What a coward that man was. No matter how much Brendon cared for him, he would be the first to admit, Dallon Weekes was a goddamn coward. 

"Some sort of chicken will be served and your only job, Brendon—" It sounded like Dallon was begging. "Your _only_ job, is to not be a nuisance and, for the love of God, just do as I ask. Please?"

"Ah, see I would,” Brendon said, “but sadly you've asked me for the two things I have no capability of doing."

Dallon hung his head, tan hair hanging to cover his eyes—he needed to cut that hair—letting out a heavy breath that Brendon knew meant he was about to throw a fit before he straightened up, forced on a smile and said, "You're going to be nice, you hear me, Brendon Urie? You're going to be nice and decent and you'll clean your face and wear a nice outfit—”

“Hey!” Brendon cut him off. “What the hell is wrong with what I’m wearing now?”

“You smell like a cow pasture,” Dallon said back.

“We are in a cow pasture!” Brendon gestured an aggressive hand to the world around their tiny, red house, everything past the porch he swung on. “ _You_ smell like a cow pasture! _I_ smell like a cow pasture! The entire goddamn _place_ smells like a cow pasture!”

Dallon glared. “Just help me pick out which fucking chicken dish I'm making, will you?"

Brendon rolled his eyes back in his head, shutting his book without marking a page. "Yeah, yeah. Buzzkill."

"Thank you," Dallon conceded. Relief swam through his voice and those blue eyes. "Now, tell me, which chicken do we prefer?"

Brendon gazed out across the grassy field. He hated how Dallon got when Breezy came to town. All frantic and shaky. It wasn't attractive in the slightest. And Dallon Weekes was a very attractive man when his ex-wife wasn't in town. What a shame it was. Making a beautiful man ugly.

Brendon scratched at his temple, drumming his fingertips over the cover of his book. He decided, "the carbonara. Breezy likes wine."

Dallon seemed far too eager with that answer. "Really? But you like the spinach one."

"Yeah," Brendon admitted, "I do. But you're not wooing me, are you? You're wooing your ex-wife."

"Only separated," Dallon corrected with a bounce on his bare heels and Brendon rolled his eyes again. 

The optimism was growing obnoxious. It had been five _months_. A whole, entire five months. That was nearly half a year. Breezy had taken off her ring, she was presumably dating other men based on the lewd comments she made at dinner, and she certainly didn't miss Dallon as he missed her. 

Dallon needed to come off this obsession. She didn't love him. That had been made abundantly clear. Why did Dallon persist?

 _Love makes you do things, Brendon_ , Dallon had explained to him when Brendon had asked once aloud—which had been a mistake. The third time Breezy had been over and Dallon was falling all over her with compliments about her hair and her eyes and stupid things that didn’t need compliments, babbling even though she couldn't seem to care less.

 _Love makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. You'll understand when you love someone._

If this was what love made you do, Brendon did not want to be another idiot in love. 

Dallon headed inside, whistling. Probably in search of his cookbook. Brendon watched with pursed lips. Watched the way the tall man walked, the curve of his spine and his hips. A good looking man for sure. Very, very nice. What a shame his wife ruined him. 

The screen door clattered shut behind him. 

Brendon let his shoulders slack as he faced the front yard, his book sitting peacefully beside him. His fingertips drummed a steady beat. He wanted to sing. Go inside and grab his guitar, play a tune or two. But he didn’t move to get off the porch. 

His eyes wandered to the gravel driveway and he imagined Breezy pulling up in her tiny Volkswagen, all narrowed eyes and clipped eyebrows, holding her head up just so she could peer down her nose at him. He grimaced, imaging the way she scoffed when they made eye contact. 

The way she said, "Brendon. Always a pleasure."

And the way he would smile back too wide and say, bowing, "Oh, Mrs. Weekes, it's all mine."

As if he were a butler at a mansion.

But the house wasn’t even close to a mansion, and Breezy was always the first to comment on it. Comment on how the shingles looked loose and the paint was chipped and the doorbell didn’t ring. Well screw her; Brendon liked his house, and he liked the flaky paint and the cow pasture smell. 

The house had been in a single family for generations. Decades, it went back to the same roots. A family tree that wasn't Brendon's own by any stretch, growing and growing, the same people with the same ideals up and down its branches.

The Weekes weeds.

It was a smaller house, quaint, and the red paint was clumped on the side where it was painted by someone who didn’t need to be painting a house. 

It was a farmhouse, despite the fact that no one in the family owned a farm. No, the Weekes lived next to the farm, around the farm, _in_ the farm. They had never owned it, they simply happened to be subject to it.

Although, Dallon did enjoy himself some gardening and he did have six chickens to his name, all squawking and mingling around the backyard. Quite the countryman when Breezy wasn’t around to mock him for it. 

The farm—by definition, a pasture that wrapped around all sides of the house, front, side, and back—harbored massive black cows with broad chests and silky skin, that licked their wide, wet noses and spooked when they saw people. There weren’t many around these parts—people—and cows were liable to be surprised when one wandered by.

Freemont was a town for cows and ghosts. 

Speaking of ghosts… The graveyard had been rather entertaining that morning. Brendon went to see his parents’ graves often but it was rare he had company. And the man in the graveyard—Ghost—he’d been a good time. Brendon liked people after all and he rarely got to see them. In Freemont, there weren’t many options to be sociable. 

He had never once met their neighbors. Hell, did they even have neighbors? The way he saw it, Dallon and he lived in a world away from the world. Just the two of them, some doe-eyed cows, and Breezy when she felt like breaking hearts. 

Sometimes, a baby cow would get loose through the rickety fence and would walk by himself down the street, flicking his tail at the flies that followed him, calling for his mother that couldn’t hear him beyond the trees to come pick him up.

Most days, Brendon would sit on the front porch with a book he never read and watch the baby cow walk by.

There was a well out front, in the center of the yard covered in dead grass that Dallon cut weekly, which was also ugly-red and barn-looking. It hadn’t been used to get water for a long time—running water was a fascinating thing, Brendon thought—so the bucket sat on the edge, rusted, and part of him believed it was glued down and merely for show. Only to show that yes, once upon a time, that house had no running water and the people inside lived that rugged, natural life.

When Brendon was perched on the front porch—and there were no baby cows to watch—he would look to the right and see the graveyard. His very own, personal cemetery. 

It was far smaller than the one in Downpour, the one that Ghost had been at. 

He could make out the old tombs with the same last name etched across their fronts; the gathering surrounded by a grey wire fence that had vines and weeds running along the sides. Except, of course, for the gate which had broken off and made it easy for the ghosts to go on a stroll beside the baby cows. 

Brendon Urie had a thing for ghosts. 

Dallon did too on certain days—the days Breezy came by—and he would wander through the teeny-tiny graveyard and admire graves and think to himself. Brendon could always see his face. Could practically hear him think. All pensive and worried. 

When he had a particularly bad day, Dallon would stand in front of one of those graves—usually the one with the lamb on top, which belonged to a ten-month-old baby named Helen who died in 1923—and fold his arms and close his eyes. Tilt his neck back to the sun and breath.

Brendon thought that maybe he was praying. Never asked though. It wasn't something you asked a man. 

_Hey, are you praying in that graveyard?_

No. You had to let them be. Had to let a dead man drop if he wanted to. 

It was only a matter of time before Dallon went over to the graveyard. Just until that night. Goddamn dinner and goddamn Breezy, breaking hearts. Wasn't her fault though. Dallon Weekes was a breakable man. 

Brendon rose from the porch swing reluctantly, his bones cracking with the sudden movement, and followed Dallon inside. The screen door banged loudly behind him and he moved to lean against the wooden boards of the wall. They scratched at his shirt sleeve. 

The moment you walked inside Dallon Weekes' home, you were greeted with a joint living room and kitchen, a bathroom to the side, and two bedrooms. Although if you looked, you would notice that only one of the bedrooms was used. 

It was a good thing Breezy never bothered to look. 

Brendon's eyes landed on Dallon Weekes who, sure enough, had occupied himself with a cookbook, pouring over the words with precision. As though he were studying for some important test. 

"Dallon," Brendon started with a huff.

"I don't wanna hear it," Dallon interrupted. 

"I wasn't going to say anything!" Brendon argued, throwing a hand up, even though he was most definitely planning on saying something. 

Dallon sent him a smile. Nice smile. Brendon was going to take advantage of that later. "You were."

Brendon admitted, "I was."

"What did I say last time, B?" Dallon went back to his cookbook, running his fingers over the letters as if they were brail. 

Brendon directed his eyes his bare feet. "Your marriage, not mine."

"Good!" Dallon jeered. "A+ for you."

"Don't patronize me."

"Why not?" Dallon stood, leaving the cookbook open as he crossed the floor. "It's so much fun."

Brendon only shook his head slowly from side to side, trying to think of the best way to frame his argument. 

Dallon had made his way to the cupboards to start fumbling through them. 

"All I'm saying is," Brendon blurted, "you're never gonna get over her if you keep inviting her to dinner."

Dallon's hands hesitated on a glass bowl. 

Brendon stubbed his toe against the floorboards. "That's all I'm saying."

"B." Dallon's shoulders sagged. "You don't—"

"I don't understand because I'm not in love, uh-huh." Brendon folded his arms. "You need new material, pal."

Dallon laughed quietly to himself, shaking his head, but he didn't say anymore. 

Brendon waited through a few moments of quiet, Dallon collecting his bowl and moving it to the counter to find a spoon, before he decided, "I'm not going to come to this one."

Dallon stopped fully at that. Gave Brendon a wide-eyed look. 

"Yep, you heard me right." Brendon stood his ground. "I won't tag along. You're welcome. You and Breezy can have the whole house to yourself. Just the two of you. I'll go to Downpour for the evening."

Dallon's face shifted. He said, quietly, "Brendon..."

"I'd like to," Brendon objected. “I have some errands to run, y’know. See… some friends, maybe.”

"Are you sure that..." Dallon wet his lips. "Really? Downpour? By yourself.”

“I’m a big boy,” Brendon said. “I can take care of myself.”

Dallon asked, “B. Do you really want to go to Downpour alone?”

"Do you really want to be alone with your wife?" Brendon asked back. 

Dallon hesitated for a split second. His eyes softened when he looked at Brendon, hopeful. "You really will?"

"For you," Brendon said, "I'd do whatever."

Dallon beamed. "I appreciate this B, I really do. You don't know how much—"

"Trust me," Brendon said, fixing on a false grin, "I do. Besides, you’ll make it up to me later.”

Dallon went a noticeable shade redder in his cheeks—he knew what that meant—and didn't say anything, merely nodded, quick to avert his gaze from Brendon's own. Brendon pretended it didn't bother him. He walked around the edge of the table, coming to sit across from Dallon on a stool, folding his arms on the top of the table. 

He let a silence pass them by as Dallon fumbled with his recipe book, frantically flipping through the pages. 

"Dallon. Buddy." Brendon snorted. "Stop looking like you don't have the time. You've got like four hours before this dinner. Carbonara takes what? I don’t know, two? You’re gonna kill yourself like this."

"I just don't want to look like I don't have my shit together," Dallon said without looking up at Brendon. His fingers were tripping over the pages and his hair had fallen into his eyes. His voice was high. "I _do_ have my shit together."

Brendon bit the inside of his lip. Kept himself from saying something he would regret. "Yep. Sure you do, Dal."

Dallon didn't make an attempt to talk to him again, only flipping and flipping pages with his shaky fingers, eliciting a more annoying sound every time a page turned. A ‘flip-flap’ sound that made Brendon cringe. 

Finally, the sound was too much and Brendon was forced to stand from his chair and wander back outside to his swing, waving goodbye to Dallon over his shoulder. It didn’t actually matter though; if he had bid him farewell or not, Dallon wasn’t paying attention. 

He made sure to shut the door carefully behind him, hearing the click of it in place. Had to drown out the page-turning and the panicked breathing and the shit that was so obviously not together.

It was a shame that his incessant heartbeat had to follow him outside. 

He hated how Dallon got when Breezy was around. Hated how different that man was from the Dallon Weekes that had been keeping his bed warm for the last five months. That man was funny, charming, and he seemed kind enough. 

Brendon considered himself a more than brilliant judge of character. After all, he knew living. And he knew people better. 

People like Dallon Weekes were easy to understand; easy to please. Kiss him on the cheek once in a while, make him blush with a lewd comment or two in private, ruffle his hair, and you had him. All Brendon had to do was smile a certain way, darken his eyes, and Dallon was clay in his palms, ready to be shaped. 

Breezy had learned that years ago. The first date with Dallon Weekes when he was twenty and shiny, she knew where he and she stood. She knew how to mold clay just right to dim the glow. 

Breezy Douglas had a way about her. She was a very beautiful woman, with her fine hair and her sharp chin, there was no doubt about it. Her eyes were cold, unattainable, but that only made her more attractive. 

No wonder Dallon fell so pathetically for her. 

The moment he had met her—back when he was young and impressionable and moronic, or well, more so—he had known she was the one. _Love at first sight_ , he often said. Brendon thought it was a bunch of bullshit. He didn't try to hide that. 

Breezy knew love was a fallacy too and that made Brendon somewhat respect her. Although, that respect was quick to vanish when she broke Dallon's heart. You couldn’t respect a woman that broke your best friend’s heart, it was in the official friendship rulebook. 

Seriously? A ten-year marriage and she cheated on “random guy in a bar.” If she was going to cheat, she should have at least made it meaningful. 

That was what Dallon kept saying. That he would have found some way to deal with it if it had at least been about falling in love. If she had just fallen in love with another man. At least then he could know she was happy. That she was _going_ to be happy. But nope. It wasn't that she loved someone else. 

It was just that she stopped loving him. 

Breezy broke Dallon, and that was something Brendon could never forgive. 

It was his duty as a best friend to think she was a bitch. He had an obligation to think that. Although, Dallon frequently got onto him when he voiced it out loud. 

Brendon collected his coat from the swing, carefully sliding it on, his gloves quick to follow. It was a colder day, important to dress warmly. He wasn’t so fond of the coat, or the gloves, as they had a certain… monetary status attached. He didn’t like looking anything other than comfortable. But they were a gift and they were warm. 

Mustn’t let a good gift go to waste. 

He fixed his hands into his pockets as he strolled off the porch, feet still bare, to wander through the grass, feeling the way the cold mud sunk between his toes. 

He hadn’t lived in Freemont his whole life. Only since his parents died. How long was that now? Eight years maybe; seven? He couldn’t remember the exact date. Or, well, he could but he tried his best not to. It wasn’t the sort of date he liked to remember. 

He’d lived in Downpour since he was born. God, did he hate that place. The way the smog burned your nose and you couldn’t sleep because the cars honked all night long and the wives yelled at their husbands into the morning. 

How his parents had ever loved it, he would never understand. Probably because they were the ones screaming. 

And still, he found himself going back every week with Dallon to watch him play pool in bars and lose money, and to slip away to do his own work. Although, in Downpour, he always came back with a few extra twenties to his name. Dallon never asked what they were from, which was smart of him. He didn’t want to know. 

Brendon made a lap around the house, back to where the chickens were, to watch them poke and prod at the soil and seed. Fat little brown birds with speckles of frost on their feathers. He puckered his lips as he watched them flap around and crow. 

“Y’know if reincarnation is real,” he said aloud to them, hoping they would listen, “I’d love to come back as one of you guys. Life would be a hell of a lot easier if I were a cock.”

He laughed into the cold air. 

It was disappointing when the air didn’t laugh back. 

The chickens raised their tiny heads to stare at him, beady black eyes menacing. He stared back, his own black eyes mimicking their gaze. 

Oh, to be a chicken in Freemont covered in frost.

And then they ruffled their feathers to shake the remaining snowflakes off and returned to their food. Peck. Peck. Peck. Such simple creatures. One perfect movement—peck—and they were satisfied. If only Brendon were a chicken. Might be satisfied if he were a chicken. 

Chickens didn’t have to worry about love.

He turned away and continued on his walk around the house.

He had life figured out. He did. But it would be even better if he were a chicken. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about life at all. Name how many chickens worry about being alive. None, that’s how many. 

Chances were Breezy would be over for some time. Dallon would probably try and make sure she didn’t ever leave. Sad, really. Brendon wished he could convince the man to get over it. But he wouldn’t. That was the Dallon Weekes way. Hold on, refuse to let go.

He walked back up to the front porch. 

“Dal!” he yelled. 

“Yeah?” Dallon shouted back through the screen door from where he was in the kitchen, fumbling to defrost his own chicken. Funny that all the chickens outside had to do was shake it off. 

Brendon peaked his head through the door. “Can I take the car?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dallon said without turning his way. He was practically inside the fridge. “Of course you can, B. No problem.”

“Great.” Brendon stood in the doorway, silent, watching Dallon work. It was hard, but sometimes he could train his body to be still. If he was watching. Only when he was watching. 

Dallon had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt—it was blue, cream, his colors definitely—and his hair was disarranged, flopping over his eyes. His face lacked joy. 

Brendon grimaced at him, rather upset at the display. He liked it far better when Dallon was smiling. Dallon had such a nice smile. His teeth were sparkly white and his dimples were fun to trace.

“Please take a shower before she gets here,” Brendon uttered suddenly. He picked at a button on the bottom of the coat he hated. 

“What?” Dallon glanced over his shoulder, eyebrows creasing as if he didn’t understand what had been said. “What’d you mean, ‘take a shower?' I don’t need to take a shower. Do I need to take a shower?”

Brendon wiped his feet on the mat, dirt scraping on the brustles. “You most certainly need to take a shower.” 

“No—” Dallon bent to pull open a drawer— “I do not. Where’s the wine—the red one; your favorite? What is it called? Malbec?”

“The Malbec is in the left cabinet but Breezy likes the Merlot, which is in the right,” Brendon replied through a hum to which Dallon thanked him and retrieved the correct bottle, “and you smell like a cow pasture. Please fix it. I'm leaving so now she's gonna know it's you who smells bad. If I stayed, you'd blame it on me but... alas.”

That made Dallon slow to a stop. It always helped to use the man’s words against him. Dallon was a stickler for words. 

He peeked his head over the counter reluctantly, his nose balancing on the corner, a crocodile out of a swamp. Brendon chortled to himself. A tall man looking small. There was some metaphor there. 

Dallon mumbled, “I do?”

Brendon crinkled his nose for effect. “Baby, you do.”

“Fuck.”

He was up in an instant, skirting away from the counter and moving his hands to untuck his perfectly colored shirt from his jeans, his fingers getting caught in the loops in his hurry. Brendon took note of the way Dallon’s fingers tripped and moved at the buttons, flicking and picking. A chicken after food. 

“Can you uh—” Dallon sacrificed a hand to wave to the counter while his other hand pried at his collar— “Can you start the sauce; you remember how to make it, don’t you?” 

Brendon dipped his head, watching Dallon fiddle with his shirt buttons on his way through the living room. He trailed behind easily, his bare feet padding on the wooden floor, a contrast to Dallon’s clunky boots making their rounds. He said, “I do.”

“Okay, will you please get that started while I—” Dallon’s shirt got caught as he was trying to get it over his head and he let out a meek sound of panic, scrabbling with the garment. Dallon’s voice came out muffled, “help. Help me. I’m stuck.”

Brendon covered his snort as a cough. 

“Here. C’mon now. Dal—” He reached out— “Relax. It’s not like you’re in quicksand or something. Calm down.” 

Brendon stepped forward to help him ease the shirt off, his smile broad as he did, so when Dallon was released he would be met with that sneer instantly. Sure enough, when Dallon caught sight of Brendon’s barely held back laughter, he ducked his head, averting his eyes to the floor. 

Brendon pulled the shirt into his hands, observing Dallon shrink. He kept his voice gentle, reassuring. “I will make the sauce, Dal, don’t worry. I’ve got it.”

“Thanks.” Dallon rubbed at his throat with tentative fingers. Brendon let his eyes roam over Dallon’s torso a brief second, the smooth skin and the long fingers that sat splayed over his stomach. 

He wet his lips. Glanced up, his eyes dark. “Sure you don’t want me to come with?”

Dallon paused, his nervous blue eyes flickering, seeming to contemplate the offer and he looked as though he might have said yes before he shook his head sharply, and squeezed his eyes shut. “N-no. No. I can’t ju—My wife will be here in four hours, B. No.”

Brendon stiffened. Handed Dallon his shirt back which Dallon held against his chest like a cover. 

“Ex-wife,” Brendon reminded.

Dallon stared at the shirt in his hands. “Separated.”

Brendon patted Dallon’s cheek with his palm. Felt the warm skin beneath his touch, how hot compared to the cold air outside, burning his hand. Noticed the way Dallon refused to look at him. He held his hand there at the side of Dallon’s face; hot, hot, hot. Contemplated possible actions. 

He bent in—plenty of time for Dallon to pull away if he wanted to, which he didn’t, Brendon knew he didn’t—and kissed him with soft lips on the corner of the mouth. 

Dallon flinched anyway. 

“Go shower,” Brendon mumbled, keeping his mouth beside Dallon’s. Waiting for a returning move. It didn’t come. He pulled back. “I’ve got everything here covered.”

Dallon nodded, his eyes darting from the floor to Brendon’s face. He hesitated. Almost as though he was going to invite Brendon to finally join him but Brendon didn’t give him the opportunity to, drawing his hand away from Dallon’s face and walking back to the kitchen. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dallon waver in the living room, holding tight to his shirt with white knuckles, staring at the floor, before he shuffled to the bathroom, lonely. 

Brendon told himself he wasn’t disappointed. 

Dallon was only in the shower for about twenty minutes and, in that time, Brendon had shed his coat and gloves and hung them over the back of one of the dining table’s chairs—it wasn’t a proper dining table; it could only seat four people but Dallon’s grandfather had made it himself so they stuck with it. Besides, it wasn’t as though Dallon and he had any guests other than Breezy. 

He was busying himself with stirring the sauce he had constructed when Dallon came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped up and around his chest like he were a girl, ruffling a hand through his own hair to keep it back from his face. 

Brendon sent him a sideways glance as the taller man walked from the bathroom to the bedroom—the one that was used. He cried out so Dallon could hear, “don’t forget to shave.”

Dallon stopped halfway to the door, hand freezing in his hair. He held his towel tighter. “Shave?”

“Yeah,” Brendon said, bobbing his head, “and give your hair a trim while you’re at it.”

Dallon absently touched the side of his chin, scratching at the shadow that had accumulated there over the past few days. “A haircut? Do I have time to—”

“Yes,” Brendon said, “you do. Do you know why? Because I’m making dinner. Now go on. Get all nice and clean for the pretty lady, why don’t you.”

Dallon didn’t object as he turned heel and went right back into the bathroom. He may have been pouting though.

When he could hear the buzz of the razor, Brendon grinned, more than pleased with this win. It wasn’t that Breezy disliked longer hair, it was that Brendon wasn’t fond of the way stubble scratched his thighs. It gave him beard-burn. He'd been begging Dallon to shave for half a week.

He went back to preparing his—Dallon’s—sauce. A brief idea crossed his mind to poison it so Breezy wouldn’t ever come back but he thought better of it and merely snickered to himself in the kitchen like it was a good joke. 

It was a joke. 

Mostly. 

Brendon made sure not to use all the wine for the sauce. He knew Dallon would be needing the rest of it after Breezy left. He’d also be needing Brendon, that was for certain, and a large part of why Brendon was making him shave. 

_So I’ll go to Downpour, probably get dinner,_ he recounted in his head, _maybe take a walk? Oh… I guess I could go see Pete, get dinner for free._

How many hours did he need to kill while Dallon and Breezy had dinner?

Probably… Do the math… Three? Maybe four to be safe. 

Four hours in Downpour with Pete Wentz was not ideal… But he’d done it before. He could do it again.

 _Suppose I could always go back to the cemetery,_ he thought. _See if Ghost is still hanging around. What am I saying? Of course he’s not still there. You don’t spend your entire day in a cemetery; that’s depressing._

“Here.” Dallon came back out from the bathroom, wrapped snugly in his towel. “Do I look presentable now?”

Brendon gave him a once over. No stubble to detect. Neat, nice and tidy. Water dripped from the ends of his newly short hair and onto his neck. He kept reaching up to wipe it away like he was bothered by the droplets. 

Brendon moved his finger in a circle in the air, signifying that Dallon should do a twirl.

“Really?” Dallon asked incredulously. 

“Do a spin,” Brendon insisted. 

Dallon huffed but did as he was asked. 

“Good boy,” Brendon teased.

Dallon fully turned back around, flipping Brendon his middle finger. “Bite me, Urie.”

“Maybe later.” Brendon was satisfied with what he’d seen. “Yeah. Looks good. You do. Now go get dressed. Is the navy shirt clean?”

Dallon sighed. “I don’t know. Did you do laundry? It was your turn.”

“It was _your_ turn. If the navy shirt is clean, wear it. If not…” Brendon tapped his chin. “Go for the uh… the one that looks like you’re sending your daughter to her first day of kindergarten.”

“The grey sweater?” Dallon prompted, looking puzzled.

“Yes.” Brendon snapped his fingers. “The grey one, thank you.” 

Dallon took the advice into consideration, narrowing his eyes, before retreating back to the bedroom once more. He shouted once he was inside again—away from Brendon’s scrutinizing eyes— “With the black pants?”

“Yeah,” Brendon called, over his shoulder, “The ones with the crease down the sides; they accentuate your ass!”

“Breezy doesn't care about my ass." Brendon could hear the shuffling of fabric as he hopped into his pants. 

“Breezy _absolutely_ cares about your ass.” Brendon laughed. “ _Everybody_ cares about your ass, it’s your best feature!” 

“My ass is not my best feature,” Dallon argued, walking out of the bedroom, tugging his sweater over his head as he did so. “And I am offended you think that.”

“Please,” Brendon grunted. “You are _flattered_ that I think that.”

“No, I’m not.” 

Dallon came to stand beside him, leaning an arm against the countertop, observing Brendon stir around his wine and mushrooms in a pan, seemingly mesmerized by the way the liquid curled in circles over and over again after the spoon. 

He said, “I feel harassed.”

“Saying your ass is your best feature is not harassment.”

Brendon reached to his side, as fast as he could, and grabbed the back of Dallon’s pants in his palm. 

“Hey!” Dallon yelped, jumping away, placing his hands on the offended area. 

Brendon laughed, hard, pointing at Dallon’s expression. “ _That’s_ harassment.”

“Fuck you,” Dallon said but his mouth was curled into a smile as he shoved Brendon’s shoulder, returning to stand closer to him than before. 

“Mhm.” Brendon batted his eyelashes. “I know you want to.”

Dallon's hand slid from Brendon’s shoulder to rest on the small of his back. He didn’t say a word, only held his hand in place on Brendon’s shirt, his fingers carefully pressed into the notches of his spine. 

That said all it needed to. 

Breezy could come by and break Dallon’s heart all she wanted, Brendon was good with people. He was better at putting them back together. 

“Met a ghost today,” he said without reason to.

Dallon’s hand stayed firm on his back. He cocked his head to the side to listen, directing his eyes to Brendon instead of the wine. “A ghost?”

“When I was in Downpour earlier this morning,” he informed. “Met a ghost.”

Dallon moved his hand barely to Brendon’s side so his fingers could rest on his belt, a finger easing itself into one loop. 

“Didn’t have a name, which was disappointing, but he was…” Brendon tried to place the word. “ _I_ was interested.”

“In the ghost?” Dallon seemed perplexed. “Was it… I mean… What do you mean when you say ghost?”

Brendon grinned, turning so Dallon and he were face to face. Their noses were a bit too close and Dallon eased back so they wouldn't touch. There was a nervousness to his features. He didn’t seem so excited about the ghost in the graveyard. 

Brendon bit the inside of his cheek. 

“Nothing,” he decided, peering back into his sauce. He kept his smile up despite the way it quivered. “I’ll tell you later. After Breezy has bored you out of your mind and you’re in need of a good story.”

Dallon scoffed. “Hey, I’m sure that it won’t be—”

“You will be so bored you’ll be begging me to put a bullet in your head,” Brendon said, shifting his shoulders. “That’s how bored Breezy is going to make you. Now, here, let this sauce sit for an hour or so and you know the rest.”

He handed off the spoon to Dallon, who in his surprise, removed his hand from Brendon’s side to take the spoon’s handle in both hands. 

“Wait—” he said. “You’re going now?”

“Well, I want to get to Downpour soon.” Brendon wiped his hands off on his jeans. “Don’t want to be wandering around the streets while it’s dark.”

That seemed to cause Dallon serious concern. His face drained and he opened his mouth and closed it a few times. He fumbled, “You’re—While it’s dark?”

“I figure.” Brendon kept his tone nonchalant as he started toward the chair he had abandoned his gloves and coat on. “But I’ll be back before midnight.”

“I—”

“C’mon, Dal,” Brendon said, sliding the coat over one arm. “I’ll be fine.”

“See, you saying you’ll be fine,” Dallon said, “sort of ensures that the universe is going to make you not fine. Knock on wood when you say something like that.”

“I’ll be _fine_.” Brendon hammered his fist on the dining room table three times. “Happy?” 

Dallon flattened his mouth to a line. “Funny.”

“It’s cute that you’re worried though.” 

Brendon had successfully put his entire coat on, working on the gloves. He was so focused on working his fingers into them that he didn’t even see Dallon's towering figure approaching in his peripheral vision. By the time he glanced up, Dallon was already beside him, squinting down. 

“Jesus,” Brendon swore, twitching back. 

Dallon took Brendon by the back of the neck and pulled his head forward gently to place a kiss on the top of his head without warning, far too gentle for comfort. 

Brendon’s body went stiff. 

“Be safe,” Dallon murmured as if it was something he said all the time, moving back. 

“Right.” Something turned Brendon’s stomach. “Yeah, of course, will do.”

He went for the door; his feet clunked on the floorboards, far too heavy for his head which felt too light. This was an odd feeling. What the hell was this? 

“I’ll tell Breezy you said hi,” Dallon called as Brendon’s hand reached the knob. 

His head felt heavy once again.

“Yeah, okay. Hi.” Brendon mimicked a robotic wave before he was out the door, the cold air swallowing up his coat and gloves with him buried beneath, but Dallon had already turned back to the sauce for his wife. 

He didn’t see a thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> And I know this chapter is slower but a heads up, this is going to be a faster burn than my previous work. Which means very slow but it won't take 25 chapters for them to kiss this time, don't worry.


	3. Simple People Sometimes Scare Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right. I'm alive.

Jon Walker was a simple man. By all standards and definitions, Jon Walker was as simple as men came. He was soft-spoken but his jokes were vulgar when he made them and his laughter was powerful and breathy when he chose to laugh.

He was attractive to the common eye, with his rounded jaw and charming smile but he wasn’t exquisite; didn’t make you turn your head but he made your eyes linger for sure. 

He was a by-the-book man, Jon Walker. Followed the rules; he always had and he always would, that was how Ryan saw it. Jon and he hadn’t talked every day after he moved to Esteban but they had kept in touch a decent amount, unlike Spencer and him. Although it _had_ been seven years, men were allowed to drift apart in such a time.

Ryan had gone to high school with both Jon and Spencer and back then it had felt a little like they ran the world. Then they all turned eighteen, graduated, the future beckoned them forth, and they fled.

Spencer had chosen to go into his father’s business (banking, of all things) which was what boys out of high school did when they didn’t know what else to do with their lives. When you lacked purpose, you used someone else’s and pretended it was your own. 

If there was one person in the world more simple than Jon Walker, it would have been Spencer Smith. But Spencer was less simple, more boring. More _predictable_.

Jon Walker went to law school after high school. Law school was about as unpredictable as you could be if you were simple, Ryan joked. Most simple men became doctors. A lawyer? Wow, Jon Walker was really pushing limits.

He had always been the smartest of the three of them (not that Spencer and Ryan were dumb, but Ryan wasn’t so good at Science and Spencer couldn’t write an essay to save his life) and he was the best at arguing. Lawyers argued, was his big selling point back in the day, and he was very good at arguing so chances were he would be fantastic at being a lawyer.

As far as Ryan knew, Jon Walker was still a lawyer. Still a simple man fighting the good fight.

When Ryan and Jon did talk—over the course of the last seven years after Ryan ran away to ‘follow his dreams,’ whatever that has meant—it was never about work. 

It was about the fact that Ryan still didn’t have a girlfriend and then it was the fact that Ryan didn’t seem to like girls very much at all, actually, and then it was the fact that Ryan had secretly been gay this entire time and then it was the fact that Ryan still didn’t have a boyfriend.

A simple conversation and yet Jon pretended it was a new topic whenever they stumbled across it. Would always go along the lines of:

Jon, eagerly, as the shuffling of papers rang in the background; Jon was frequently filing when the two talked, “so that girl you mentioned—Kellie, right?”

Ryan, irritated while scribbling things down in a notebook—trying to work even when he was off work— “Kellie?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jon would agree, “that girl you were telling me about. The one with the dog.”

“I don’t know any girls named Kellie with dogs.” Ryan would beat his chin with a pencil.

“Maybe it’s not Kellie… Oh! Oh!” As if Jon had all the answers. “Keltie! Not Kellie! _Keltie_! With a T! That’s the bitch!”

“Keltie isn’t a bitch,” Ryan would say even though Keltie was absolutely a bitch. But only her friends could call her that and Jon wasn’t her friend. “And I’m not going to date her.”

“Why not?” Jon would whine.

“Because she’s a girl.”

And then Jon would make some dumb, simple sound, as if they hadn’t had this same conversation over a hundred times and then he would say, “well, what about that guy you mentioned then, uh, what was it? With a B or something.”

“Brent,” Ryan would groan, “and I’m not going to fuck Brent.”

“Why not?”

Ryan would close his notebook with a thwack. “Because Brent’s a bitch.”

And on and on it went until they hung up and called back the next Saturday when Ryan had nothing better to do. Not to say that he didn’t like talking to Jon. He _did_ like talking to Jon; he just wasn’t so good on the phone. He got boring fast and bored faster.

And he hated talking about his nonexistent lovers.

One of those days, he was going to tell Jon he actually _did_ have a boyfriend and Jon wasn’t going to have a single idea what to say.

Meanwhile, the conversation topic Ryan picked to tease Jon about was the fact that Jon Walker had had his own girlfriend for four years and hadn’t proposed yet. Her name was Cassie, Ryan knew that. He had never met her before but Jon spoke about her enough that he felt like he had. And sometimes he heard her voice in the background of a phone conversation when he was on speaker.

One time Jon had called him—horrifically drunk—and before Ryan had hung up on him, Jon had slurred, “love of my life, I swear. You ever been in love, Ry? You ever been in love?”

Ryan had chortled to himself. “No.”

“God, you’re gonna love it. Being in love, I swear, prettiest thing. Prettiest, prettiest thing. I love loving.”

“That’s nice, Jon.”

“I love you, man. Love you.”

“Okay, Walker. Drink lots of water, huh?”

When Ryan was on speaker with Jon—so they could both do work and meander through a conversation while they did, neither actually paying attention to what the other was saying—Ryan would frequently call a hello to Cassie and she would say hello back in that sweet, feminine voice of hers and Ryan would jokingly ask her when she was going to propose to Jon to which Jon would promptly take him off of speaker.

Jon was a good friend, he always had been.

Seven years after he left Downpour, and Ryan Ross was back, standing on the doormat before Jon Walker's apartment, wondering to himself if Jon Walker was still a good friend.

It was the same house that Jon had lived in during high school; after his parents had went away—something about the end of their lives and wanting to live it up—Jon had moved into the old place and made it his own. It still said ‘Walker’ on the mailbox in bright white letters but Jon must have gotten it repainted because the original white siding was gone and replaced with an orangish hue.

The house itself was about the same though, with its small front porch and white picket fence to hide the backyard. Downpour wasn’t known for its suburbs but Jon had lucked out. He lived on the edge of town, in a larger neighborhood just before you entered the city.

The smell of smoke was hardly so pronounced out here, Ryan thought.

He looked down at his feet that stood on said doormat, which had written on it, ‘one old goat and one hot chick’ with a crudely sketched goat and baby chicken. 

Ryan stared at it for a long time. 

The beady, bulbous eyes of the chicken and the drunk look on the goat’s face. He prayed to any God he knew that Cassie Vandenboom, the supposed next love of Jon Walker’s life, didn’t look like that chicken.

He reached up to knock once more on the door, fidgeting with the coat wrapped around his shoulders. He was worried Jon wouldn't want to see him. It _had_ been seven years after all and he hadn't bothered forewarning him prior to coming over.

He was a selfish person, Ryan. He would be the first to admit it. He was a selfish person and he cared about himself far before anyone else. But hey, he was the best person he knew.

"Oh, for the love of—" He grumbled after Jon hadn't answered the door on the fifth knock. What the hell was going on in there? Ryan had seen his car parked out front, so he had to be home.

Seven years and Jon still lived in the same house and drove the same car. Simple man.

"Jon!" Ryan screamed, pounding his fist on the door. His cheeks were growing red with the cold and he kept sniveling. He needed a fireplace, goddammit. "Jonathon Jacob Walker, you answer your fucking door before I kick it in; I swear to _God_ I will do it! I am freezing my ass off out here! Let me in!"

Suddenly, there was an absurd amount of shuffling from inside the house and a loud clatter—Ryan could only assume something had been knocked over—before a muffled shout came in reply, "just a fucking minute, man, I'm working on it! What the fuck!"

That was Jon Walker alright. 

Ryan felt a strange sensation in his stomach at the sound. Seven years and he hadn’t even come by to visit. Hadn’t even tried. He was a bad friend.

Although, that realization didn't stop him from shouting, "Jon!" once again with more passion.

The voice drew closer to the door. Scrambling. "I said one minute, man! What? You can't wait one goddamn minute!"

"Not one minute!" Ryan shouted. He was starting to smile at the corners of his mouth. "Now!"

The door flung open to reveal Jon Walker standing in the frame, his dark hair screwed to all hell—and wet like he had been in the shower—his eyes crazed and his pupils obviously dilated, a t-shirt slung over his head but not on entirely so a strip of his tanned stomach was visible, the V of his hips accentuated by his belt-less jeans.

His fly was partially undone.

Ryan scanned him over roughly before stopping on his face. The furious irritation that burned in Jon's eyes subsided instantly upon sight of Ryan Ross on his doormat and instead, those eyes widened. His mouth parted into an accentuated 'o' shape.

"Dude," Jon said, his voice abnormally hoarse. "Ryan."

"Dude," Ryan mimicked, in no mood to exchange pleasantries. "You look like shit."

Jon scoffed in surprise. His eyes flickered over Ryan, as if trying to gauge as to whether he was real or not. 

"No, I mean seriously," Ryan tried again, still scanning Jon's body over with his eyes.

The other man had lost a significant amount of weight in seven years. Not in a bad way, perhaps. But... God, he barely resembled himself. Clean-shaven and if his hair wasn't so messed up, Ryan figured he had one of those 'I'm a working man' type haircuts that all those working men types had.

Ryan's eyes took note of the bruise that sat at the top of Jon’s shoulder, only half visible beneath the collar of his loose shirt. That _was_ a bruise, wasn't it? It was purple and dark, a stark contrast to the rest of his pale skin and—oh. Oh, that was a—

Ryan narrowed his eyes. A smirk was forming. "Why do you look like shit, Jon?"

Jon returned, "I don't look like shit.”

"You look like fucking shitty shit," Ryan sang and cut himself off with a cough. "Goddamn, man, you look like a fucking addict."

Ryan gestured loosely to Jon’s fly.

“That or a whore.”

"I look good," Jon snapped back defensively, grappling to zip up his pants. He folded his arms tightly over his chest, protective of his insides, and bobbed his head at Ryan. "You're the one who looks like shit, man, with your skinny ass. Like a fucking pencil."

Ryan stabbed himself in the chest with a finger. "Pardon? I do not look like shit."

“Fucking shitty shit,” Jon sang.

“Alright, fine.” Ryan threw his hands up. “We both look like fucking shitty shit, you happy with that?”

Jon snickered. “I suppose.”

There was a beat. Ryan’s mouth stretched into a wider smile and Jon returned it, just as genuine. It was hard to make Ryan smile genuinely those days, but three mere cuss words in a song out of Jon Walker’s mouth and he was practically glowing.

Jon admired Ryan, that simple smile fixed in place before he said—and his voice was gentle, different than how people had spoken to Ryan in the last seven years— “What’re you doing here, Ryan?”

That voice was so… ‘Tender’ didn’t feel the right word, felt too romantic, but Ryan couldn’t quite place how soft Jon’s expression was; how his eyebrows turned up in that way, and how his dark, wet eyes fixed on Ryan’s own, as if he cared enough to listen to what Ryan would say. And for some odd reason, it almost gave Ryan the urge to cry.

He paused instantly, shifting back on his heels. “Did Spencer not tell you?”

“Did Spencer not tell me what?” Concern etched its way onto Jon’s smooth expression. He knew that Ryan and Spencer didn’t talk anymore. If Spencer was involved, it must have been serious. He inched himself forward in his doorway, reaching a hand to grab at the siding—as if preparing to steady himself.

His eyes shot open and he recoiled.

“Fuck,” he said, raising his other hand partially to his mouth. “You don’t have cancer, do you? Tell me you don’t have cancer, Ryan.”

“What—no, I don’t have… I don’t have cancer.” He took note of the way Jon’s shoulders fell in a sigh of relief before he finished, “My dad’s dead.”

Wet eyes went big. Jon’s voice sounded distant when it breached the air. “George died?”

Ryan nodded, matter-of-fact. It was the truth, after all, George Ross was dead. Nothing else that could be said about it, really, Ryan supposed. His father was dead. He wavered on Jon Walker’s doormat, the words playing in his head, _my dad is dead. My dad is dead_.

He tried to feel sad and then felt mildly sad that he couldn’t.

“Damn.” Jon let out a short scoff before reaching out and landing a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. He said, “Congratulations.”

And Ryan couldn’t do anything else but laugh.

It was surprise mostly, that Jon had said it out loud. Ryan had known he was thinking it, but what a bold choice to speak it for ears to hear.

Spencer had known Ryan since he was in high school and he had acted like it was some terrible tragedy when he had called Ryan up. Acted as if Ryan had cared about his father in the slightest. But not Jon. Jon Walker knew where Ryan stood when it came to his father.

He was a truly simple man.

“Thanks,” Ryan said and kept laughing—far more to himself than to Jon—his shoulder jostling the hand that rested on it. “Thanks man. Appreciate it. I do.”

“Of course!” Jon removed his hand to smooth out the bottom of his shirt. It was a mutter. “Can’t believe God beat me to it though.”

Ryan shook his head, continuing to snicker. His cheeks hurt and he blamed the cold. It was an ongoing joke—back in high school—that if God or Mother Nature didn’t do it first, Jon Walker was going to kill George Ross.

Sometimes he was going to run him over, shoot him with a B.B. gun in the eye, push him down the stairs, or strangle him with his bare hands. It wasn’t exactly the thing sixteen-year-old boys were meant to tease each other about but Jon Walker was simple, Spencer Smith was predictable, and Ryan Ross had a shit dad so there wasn’t much else to joke about.

It had never been serious by any stretch, merely a passing remark or two between them during school when Ryan would say while doing his homework, “my dad’s at it again; last night he bought a twelve-pack and drank all of it in an hour. Might be a record or something, right? Could be impressive depending on how you look at it.”

And Jon, without looking up from his textbook, would say back, “I’ll kill him for you someday, don’t worry about it.”

Of course, Jon Walker never did kill him. There was one time that he got close but no cigar.

There was never any real reason for Jon to do George Ross any harm. Ryan’s father never abused him. 

He liked to clarify that early on when people came to the assumption. He was not the boy in school whose father beat him; he was _not_ that boy.

He was the boy whose father got too drunk to function and sat in an armchair for days on end while Ryan learned how to pay bills and made dinner himself. Ryan’s father never tried to hurt him—never tried to beat Ryan or threaten him. All he did was sit in his chair in front of the television and drink his beer and wait for Ryan to keep him alive.

Ryan didn’t have a dad that beat him. Ryan didn’t have a dad at all.

There were only three times that Ryan’s father actually managed to hurt him. Only three. That was barely any. 

Twice, his father had slapped him. It wasn’t malicious or cruel to any extent. It was an open hand to the side of the cheek that made the skin pink and burn but it wasn’t cause for concern and his father had said sorry.

That’s what made it alright. Ryan’s father had blinked sluggishly and said, “sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

And Ryan had said back, moving to get ice, “I know,” because he _had_ known.

Ryan had mentioned it to Jon and Spencer in passing back then when they had asked. A simple thing.

_Yeah, I pissed my dad off last night. Should’ve known better though; he was completely trashed. What? Of course I’m alright. It’s just a tap on the cheek, what’re you getting your panties in a twist for?_

That had increased Jon’s desire to end Ryan’s father’s life but it didn’t truly escalate. Just a look up from his textbook and a sharper tone when he said, “I’ll kill him for you. If you want.”

That was all it was. Until, however, Ryan had actually gotten injured. The third time that his father hurt him accidentally.

Jokes were never anything serious until there was blood.

It was the fall of Junior year.

Ryan’s dad got drunk—wasted drunk, the kind where he couldn’t stand up without leaning on the wall—and Ryan must have said something stupid because one minute he was standing upright, speaking, and the next he was trying to dodge the glass bottle that had come flying at his face.

He almost missed it—almost—but it had shattered against the wall beside his head, and a piece had clipped him in the temple, slicing a clean split into his hairline.

He hadn’t been concerned though. He’d been fine. It was an accident after all.

 _I’m fine. I’m alright_ , he had thought to himself as he drove his father’s beat up, old car to the hospital, white-knuckled on the steering wheel. He remembered thinking as he drove—rather humorously to himself—that he was going to fail his Lang test the following day if he didn’t get home soon enough to study.

He hoped that his head wasn’t broken too bad because he really needed to do well on that Lang test.

By the time he had gotten to the ER, he was beginning to feel obnoxiously woozy, and told the first doctor he saw that he might need to sit down for a few minutes.

Turned out that he had lost quite a bit of blood on the ride over; they’d never been able to clean the driver’s seat completely of it and that had made it hard to sell. But, when Ryan moved to Esteban, the first thing he did was sell that car.

It was funny finding out that not every car had that metallic scent to it.

But that night he’d gotten stitches—ouch—a bandage slapped on his head, and he was right as rain.

He had gone straight home—after assuring the doctor’s repeatedly that it had merely been an accident, he’d tripped into the counter was all, what a clutz he was—to find his father asleep on the living room couch.

Then he’d pulled out the broom and dustpan from the kitchen pantry and carefully swept up the glass while standing in his socks. Scrubbed the kitchen floor of the tiny specks of his own blood that dotted it. Tried to ignore how hard his hands shook.

Then he had sat in his bedroom for a while on his bed without the covers, staring at the poster on the opposite wall—it was a shaded pencil drawing of a puppy and a duck in a basket—fully dressed in the same clothes. The same shirt with the collar stained red where his blood had dried.

And he had cried.

A good twenty minutes, he had sat there on his bed and shivered and sobbed, trying to understand why exactly he was crying at all. But he hadn’t been able to calm himself. Hadn’t been able to make it stop.

So he had texted Jon Walker—it had been 10:00 on a school night—and the conversation had gone as following.

Ryan: (10:03) _How do you get blood out of a car seat? I couldn’t figure anything out._

Jon: (10:12) _What?_

Jon: (10:13) _Why would there be blood on your car seats, lol, what did you do?_

Ryan: (10:15) _Head was bleeding. All good now tho._

Jon: (10:16) _Your head was bleeding?_

Ryan: (10:16) _Yeah._

Jon: (10:17) _Why the fuck was your head bleeding? What did you do?_

Ryan: (10:18) _Dad broke a beer bottle on my head lmao._

Jon: (10:18) _what._

Jon: (10:19) _He fucking what?_

Jon: (10:20) _Ryan. Wtf._

Jon: (10:21) _are you ok?_

Jon: (10:22) _Ryan_

Jon: (10:23) _Ryan are you ok_

Jon: (10:27) _omw_

It was 10:45 when an eighteen-year-old Jon Walker appeared on Ryan’s front stoop, hammering a fist on the door, equipped with rage in his wet eyes and a baseball bat, dressed in sweatpants, a white t-shirt with the school mascot on the back and sandals.

Ryan remembered the way Jon’s body had quivered all over—like there was energy buzzing in his veins he couldn’t rid himself of—as he reached out to grab a rough hold of Ryan’s chin, turning his head to the side, so as to see the large bandage in a better light.

Ryan didn’t know what exactly that white piece of cloth told Jon, but apparently everything, because Jon had let out a sharp gasp upon seeing it.

“Ryan,” Jon had breathed, flinching away as if he had been the one struck. “Ryan, what the fuck. What the _fuck_ , Ryan?”

“Right?” Ryan had feigned an awkward chuckle. “Gonna be a nice scar, hm?”

Jon had appeared appalled. His voice came out a hiss. “ _He_ did this to you?”

Ryan had stared.

“Your fucking _dad_ did this to you?” Through gritted teeth.

“Woah.” Ryan had raised his hands, moving back from Jon into his vestibule. “It’s not a big deal. Calm down, man. I cleaned it up, no worries. He was drunk, was all. Won’t happen again.”

“You said that when he hit you,” Jon had snarled.

Ryan had choked on a laugh. “Woah, he didn’t hit me—”

“His hand—” Jon had mimed— “struck your face. _Struck your face_. That is fucking hitting you, Ryan.”

Ryan tried to reason hastily, “he was drunk, Jon, and—”

“That isn’t an excuse!” Jon had shouted. “He broke a fucking bottle on your fucking head, Ryan!”

Ryan had twitched and whispered back, “shut up, Jon, you’ll wake him.”

“Oh, I’m gonna fucking wake him alright—” Jon had reared up with the bat over his head— “I’m gonna fucking kill him is what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna fucking kill the bastard!”

“Jon!” Ryan remembered lunging forward, shoving Jon in the chest to get him back, groping to pull the door shut behind him in the process, successfully locking both himself and Jon outside on the porch.

Remembered grappling with Jon to get the bat out of his hand, scrambling and fighting like two animals over food in the wild. Remembered wrestling with him over the weapon, chanting his name over and over again in a plea.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him!” Jon had yelled at no one in particular.

Ryan had attempted to take the bat from Jon for maybe ten minutes before Jon had swiped the bat frantically away, and raised it up in such a way that Ryan expected Jon to swing it down and hit him and he had cowered on instinct, reaching up to shield his already beaten face with his hands.

He hadn’t meant to, but he had audibly said, “please.”

He knew he had.

“ _Please_.”

He and Jon had never mentioned that part to each other. Never acknowledged that on that night on that porch beneath that bat, Ryan had said that. Had said _please_. But he had.

Fall of Junior year, Ryan Ross—in a blood-soaked t-shirt and jeans—had raised his hands over his face shielding a fresh cut already made and begged his best friend not to hurt him.

Jon had dropped the weapon to the wooden boards of the porch without hesitation. And he had said, so small, “fuck. Fuck, Ryan, I’m—”

“Don’t kill my dad,” Ryan had said, keeping one arm above his head.

Jon gaped. “I—”

“Don’t kill my dad,” he had repeated.

Jon had swallowed.

“He didn’t mean to.”

Ryan had stood there on the porch, trembling barely. It had probably been at that moment that—in the blue glow of the bug zappers—that Jon had been able to make out the tear tracks down Ryan’s flushed cheeks.

“He didn’t mean to, Jon,” Ryan had babbled, “don’t kill my dad.”

“I won’t kill your dad,” Jon choked out.

“You promise,” Ryan had said and it was a demand.

“I promise.” Jon had held a fist at his side. “I promise I won’t kill your dad.”

And then Ryan had laughed.

“Fuck!” he had exclaimed, turning his face up. “What kind of fucks are we? What a weird fucking promise that is. ‘I won’t kill your dad.’ What the fuck is wrong with us?”

And suddenly he was crying out loud again and Jon merely stood there, dead silent, staring ahead at nothing, listening to Ryan sob on his porch.

“I won’t kill your dad,” Jon had repeated, distant. “I promise I won’t kill your dad.”

And he hadn’t. Good on Jon. Nearly a decade later and he had kept his promise. He hadn’t killed Ryan’s dad. God had beaten him to the punch. What a damn shame.

“Sorry,” Ryan said with a plain smile, his hands balled into fists in his pockets. “I know how much you wanted the honor.”

“It’s alright,” Jon said. “I’ll live vicariously through the obituaries… Tell me it was slow.”

Ryan’s smile twitched. “It wasn’t.”

“Damn.” Jon snapped his fingers. It seemed he was still in on the joke but Ryan no longer found it funny. There was something about standing on a porch, talking about his dead father, that made his skin feel too tight on his bones.

Neither of them spoke. Somewhere down the street, someone honked their horn.

“Hey,” Jon tried, “d’you… D’you want to come inside, maybe?”

As if he couldn’t think of what else to ask.

“Hell yes,” Ryan agreed emphatically, already starting forward, “I’m freezing my ass off out here. I was worried you’d never get to it.”

Jon moved to the side easily, pressing his back to the door to allow Ryan entrance into his home. Ryan didn’t bother to wipe his feet on the mat and his boots made two clear imprints of old rain on the floorboards as he walked. Jon glanced at them distastefully but he didn’t speak a word.

“Wow,” Ryan mouthed as he strolled inside, his hands finding their way out of his pockets, and his eyes finding their way around the wallpaper.

Jon’s house led from his front door into his living room which contained a nice glass coffee table, and two sofas—one barely smaller than the other.

“You re-decorated,” Ryan observed and—upon seeing the fluffy cream carpet on the floor—decided he ought to take off his boots. He asked, gesturing, “can I?”

“Yeah,” Jon said and Ryan shucked his shoes off to shove them into the corner beside the door. “And of course I re-decorated. It’s been seven years.”

Ryan hummed. Made sense.

“What?” Jon asked. “Got a problem? What’d you think?”

Ryan returned, “I think it’s a house,” and walked his mismatched socks across the carpet. It was a nice carpet. Rich-type carpet, like rabbit-fur gloves. Ryan wet his lips. Being a lawyer must have been nice. 

Jon trailed behind him on bare feet, unaware of how nice his carpet was. “Yeah, but it’s a nice house.”

“Sure it’s a nice house.” Ryan deposited himself onto the sofa. “Small though.”

“You live in a two-room apartment in _Esteban_ ,” Jon chastised, skimming his hand over the back of his own sofa. “Don’t tell me about small.”

Ryan rolled his eyes and chuckled as he reclined back into the cushions. “Got a point there.”

“How is it, huh? Esteban?” Jon asked, sitting himself on the other sofa across from Ryan. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and blink intently. As if he needed all the answers he could pull out of Ryan.

“It’s alright.” Ryan shrugged. “How’s Downpour?”

Jon shrugged back. “It’s alright.”

“That’s good.”

“Uh-huh.”

Ryan wet his lips again; they were remarkably dry. He exhaled uncomfortably. 

Jon broke into a grin. “We’re not very good at this friend thing, are we?”

Ryan snorted. “No. No, we aren’t. We’re pretty terrible.”

He was going to say something else—make a real attempt at being a friend and maybe hint to Jon that he needed a place to stay—but he didn’t get the chance as he heard a door slam shut from down the hall.

He snapped his head to attention.

From around the corner came a young woman, striding purposefully from the next room—as if there was important business to be tended to. She barely looked toward the living room as she crossed the threshold, using her hands to tie her long brown hair back into a ponytail.

Ryan couldn’t help but take notice of her outfit, or well, the lack thereof. She was wearing a large t-shirt—one with an advertisement on it, but he didn’t know what for—and black panties.

And that was all.

Not that it was bad; she was a very beautiful woman with her long legs and sharp jaw, but Ryan wasn’t so enamored. She wasn’t exactly his type.

He watched after her as she moved through the home.

“Jon,” she said, mostly to the air, “who was at the door?”

“I was at the door,” Ryan replied before Jon could.

Instantly, the girl did a sharp turn, her eyes bugging out of her head in alarm. She exclaimed, “oh God!” and moved to cover herself but there wasn’t much she could do besides tug her t-shirt down a little further over her underwear.

“Fuck,” she gasped, “I didn’t realize we had company.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said, fixing her with the kindest smile he could. It hurt his mouth slightly. He made sure to keep his eyes on her face; God forbid she think he was interested. He couldn’t imagine how awkward that would be. “Should have called ahead.”

“Yeah, sorry,” Jon agreed and his voice had a hint of apology to it but there was humor there too and when Ryan glanced at him, he found the other man on the verge of laughter. “Should have warned you.”

“Yeah, no shit—” the woman started to snap before it seemed to occur to her that Ryan was still there. “I’m so sorry, you give me a moment and I’ll go get decent.”

“Cassie, it’s alright,” Jon started, leaning toward her, as if he might reach out, “Ryan isn’t—”

“Cassie?” Ryan repeated, the name hitting him hard.

Both pairs of eyes landed on him.

“This is your girl?” Ryan asked, turning back to Jon.

“Oh,” Jon said, hitting himself playfully in the temple. “Damn, look at me, I’m horrible at this. Really horrible. Ryan, this is Cassie. Cassie, Ryan.”

Cassie’s blue eyes stayed firm on Ryan. A hint of recognition flashed in them and she pointed a finger. “You’re Ryan? I knew I knew your voice!”

“Ah, thank you.” Ryan dipped his head. “I hear it’s memorable.”

“Wait—” Cassie shook her head. She seemed to forget that she was in only her underwear, straightening her posture up. Ryan caught a glimpse of her toned stomach and shook his head quickly, eyes going back to her face. “I thought you lived in Esteban. Jon said that—”

“He does live in Esteban,” Jon explained, “he’s only by to visit.”

“Really?” Cassie pulled a skeptical face. “That’s, what? A five-hour drive?”

“Five and a half,” Ryan corrected.

“To _visit_?” Cassie frowned. “That doesn’t make a lot of—”

“There’s been a situation,” was what Ryan said aloud which, the moment he did, sounded like the stupidest thing he could have possibly said and Jon sent him a look that corroborated that story.

“Uh…” Jon pulled his eyes off Ryan. “Yeah. A _situation_.”

“What sort of situation?” Cassie asked with sudden intrigue. Her eyes darted between Ryan and Jon. She must have been the sort that liked a good story. Ryan understood that. He liked a good story himself. 

“Family,” Ryan said which meant _it’s personal, stop asking_ but Cassie didn’t seem to perceive it as such and instead wandered across the living room to the same sofa Jon was sitting on. She placed herself down on it beside him, their knees bumping together.

“Family?” she chorused. Her eyes softened. She must be the sort to care about family too. Jon was that sort. Ryan bet they would have simple little caring babies together, how lovely.

“Cassie,” Jon mumbled to his side, something of a warning, and Cassie looked at him with those blue eyes of her, sparkling. It seemed to dawn on her then—all of it—the fact that she didn’t know Ryan or his family and the fact that she wasn’t wearing any pants.

“Oh!” she said and stood abruptly, tugging at the bottom of her shirt. “Excuse me a minute, I’m going to get dressed. For real, this time.”

“Have fun,” Jon teased bluntly and Cassie flicked his ear.

She left the room in a hurry, holding the bottom of the shirt against her thighs. Ryan didn’t watch her leave but he could see the way she scuttled away from the corner of his eyes. He kept his gaze trained on Jon. He waited until he heard a door shut to speak.

“She’s pretty.”

“She’s beautiful,” Jon said.

“What’s such a pretty woman doing with an ugly motherfucker like you?” Ryan asked, smirking.

“Low standards,” Jon replied and they both got a good laugh out of that. “Sorry about her by the way; might have been nice to have some heads up.”

“Ah, yeah.” Ryan rubbed the back of his neck. “I meant to call you up but it just—I never got around to it.”

“It’s no problem, Ryan, really,” Jon said. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“That’s all I do,” Ryan reminded him and Jon smiled. 

“I remember that about you,” he said. He pulled back a bit, his body sinking into his couch. He raked fingers back through his hair to tidy the mess. “You know how long you plan to stay?”

“Just until the funeral is over,” Ryan assured. It was important not to stay any longer. “No longer.”

“Ah.” Jon nodded slowly like he was mulling something important over in his head. “Y’know Cassie’s aunt died a few months back. Cancer... I think. It might not have been, actually. Something in her boobs. No... Wait. Was it her boobs? Something killed her is what I'm saying.”

“Sucks,” Ryan deadpanned and he couldn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes, thinking about the conversation with Spencer when he had mentioned Haley. Why was it that people felt they had to relate death to other death? Ryan didn’t care who had died in the past. It was his dad who was dead now.

“Yeah uh…” Jon took pause. It was obvious on his face that he had run out of conversation ideas. “Do you… Where are you staying?”

Ryan pulled his best smile. The one that said _please don’t be mad, I’m so sweet and handsome, how can you ever be mad at me?_ He started to say, “well, I was _hoping_ that—since you’re such a nice guy and all—that—”

“You want to stay here, don’t you?” Jon asked, his hands resting behind his head.

Ryan batted his eyelashes. “I don’t have anywhere else to—”

“Don’t you dare play the pity card on me.” Jon raised a finger like a mother scolding a child. He lowered it and sighed. “And you should know better than to ask, Ryan.”

Ryan grinned from ear to ear. He jeered, “Aw, you love me!”

“I hate you.”

“The finest form of love.”

Jon snorted, shaking his head back and forth. He said, conversationally, “wish you’d called ahead though, I would have cleaned. Would have also given Cassie a heads up.”

“Oh.” Ryan’s smile faltered. “Does she—I’m not going to—”

“Cassie lives with me, yeah,” Jon answered.

“Well damn."

“We been together four years. You think we live in separate houses?” Jon asked, exasperated. “That’s just a waste of money.”

“And yet you still haven’t bought her a ring,” Ryan teased.

Jon’s eyes flashed with a warning. “Also a waste of money. She knows I love her. She doesn't need some overpriced rock to prove it.”

Ryan didn’t try to press the topic any further, merely smiled sweetly again. He decided to say, “well, thanks, Jon. I’ll just sleep on the couch for a few days and then I’ll be out of your hair. You won’t even know I’m here.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun at all,” Jon said before cocking his head to the side. “How long have you been in town anyway? Without coming by?”

“Few hours now. Only a few.” Ryan walked through the day’s events in his head. “I drove in at around noon, and I was gonna call you and head straight here but I passed the graveyard—”

“Makes sense.”

Jon knew about the graveyard and Ryan’s grandfather. The fact that even though he had never met the man, Ryan liked to go and stand there and talk to the rock. That night, after his father had crashed a bottle on his head, Jon had driven him there.

Had waited by the car, standing there in the cold dark in his sweatpants and his school t-shirt and his flip flops, arms crossed and staring at the stars.

Ryan had told his grandfather’s grave that night, “your son almost killed me today.”

A silence.

“I uhm… I’m scared. Of him.” Ryan had shaken his head back and forth. There was a dull ache where the bandage sat. “And it’s not something I want to be.”

He had sent a glance over his shoulder to Jon standing at the car before looking back.

“Don’t tell Jon I said that, alright?” He had patted the headstone with trembling fingers. “He really will kill him.”

“How was it?” Jon asked from the sofa and when Ryan looked at him, he imagined stars and flip flops in a graveyard when he was seventeen. “Grandpa say anything interesting?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” Ryan replied.

Jon agreed, “the guy is pretty boring.”

Ryan scratched his neck. “Needs to come up with new jokes.”

“Absolutely.”

“But, I tell you what—” Ryan shifted forward on the sofa in an instant, his eyes and voice taking on a serious tone which caused Jon to move in tandem. The urge to tell the story was suddenly overwhelming. “I met a real person there.”

“A real person?” Jon mocked, raising a brow.

“A living person.” Ryan scowled. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”

Jon snorted. “Yeah, and? What’s so special about a living person? I see those everyday. They’re boring as hell. Worse than your grandad.”

“And he was a fucking psycho is what.” Ryan leaned back again, shaking his head, the interaction replaying itself in his mind on a loop. The man in the graveyard in the rabbit-fur gloves and coat, the way he had stood there smiling and joking about ghosts in a smooth drawl. “He was from Freemont.”

“Figures,” Jon grunted, grimacing. “Those Freemont guys are freaks.”

“He kept calling me a ghost,” Ryan said in disbelief. He still couldn’t believe the interaction had taken place. “Told me I didn’t know how to talk to a grave properly. Said something about his dead parents and—it was the weirdest fucking thing, Jon, I swear.”

“Freak,” Jon repeated. “You catch his name?”

“Urie,” Ryan answered, folding his fingers together. He could picture that white smile and the black hair. “Brendon Urie, he said. Weirdest fucking thing.”

Jon made a confused face. He thought for a second. “I think I’ve heard it before, the name… somewhere. Don’t know where though. I’ll get back to you.”

“Hey, don’t bother.” Ryan waved a hand, chuckling to himself. The memory of Brendon shimmered and seemed to fade to the back of his mind for a brief second. “I don’t care. S’not like I’m gonna see him again.”

He could picture it clearly. How Brendon had stood in a graveyard with fur gloves and an expensive coat but his worn jeans and rough boots shone through in the frigid air. How he absently touched a curl of his black hair on his forehead to move it back. The way that his breath parted in a gasp of fog as he laughed heartily at the mildest joke. How his fingers touched his heart sharply when he said, _right from my piano_.

And Ryan found himself feeling blank at the memory.

A piano was a heart, Brendon Urie implied in the graveyard. How fitting that was.

Ryan had never learned to play the piano.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, this is the busiest year of my entire life, lol. That being said, the next chapter will be faster. I already have about 2000 words of it written and I'm very excited to write the rest. 
> 
> :)


	4. P Stands for Perfected Prose

Brendon was sitting on the bed in his boxers, holding a feather pillow to his chest with both hands, his black eyes directed to the ceiling and the tapestries that hung from the canopy of the four-poster bed. 

It never failed to amaze him, the room and how beautiful it was with the lavish comforter adorned with silver loops and swirls for the design. The light that sat in the center of the ceiling—almost a chandelier but not quite—and bathed the room in a white glow, dimmer but radiant, and Brendon thought if Heaven was made for kings, this is where they would sleep. 

He moved his fingers easily over the pillow in his lap, one he had held many times before and yet who’s softness still managed to alarm him. One of those days, he was going to steal the pillow and take it to his own bed. Well, _Dallon_ ’s bed. 

He didn’t even realize he was humming a melody to himself until a voice came across the room—the sound of a door closing with it— “What song is that?” 

He turned to the side to see Pete shutting the bathroom door behind him, smiling from across the room, his fingers pausing on the collar of his shirt. He looked nice, well-groomed, his dark hair slicked back, and his vest buttoned how a vest was meant to be closed. 

“Hey,” Brendon greeted on instinct, turning to the side in bed to get a better look at Pete entering the small bedroom. 

That’s all it was, after all. Just a bed in a room. No dresser, no armoire, no windows. Just a four-poster bed fit for Heaven and an adjoining bathroom to clean up when all was said and done. Brendon had been trying to come up with a suitable name for the room for years. But the best he had managed to come up with was the ‘Prostitute Pad’ and Pete had told him ‘pad’ was not the right word. 

Pete just called it the ‘Fuck Room’ but Brendon felt that wasn’t very clever.

“Wait.” Brendon paused, Pete’s eyes lingering on him. “What’d you say?”

“The song you were singing just then.” Pete strode forward, his shiny shoes clipping the carpet toward the bed, moving to place his hand against one of the columns at the foot. He wrapped his fingers around it slowly and Brendon’s eyes tracked him.

He had spent entire days with Pete—once an entire weekend—and, still, he felt the urge to watch his hands at all times, worried where they would end up. Still felt a hint of nerves whenever the older man spoke, balancing on the edge. But, despite that, he smiled. 

“I was singing?” he asked, genuinely unaware.

Pete seemed pleased with the question. “You were.”

“Huh.” Brendon hugged the pillow closer. “Didn’t even realize.”

“You do that,” Pete said and came to sit on the bed beside him. The mattress sunk beneath his weight. “Sing without thinking. All the time.”

“Bad habit?” Brendon asked.

Pete eased off his tie, not looking Brendon’s way as he dropped it onto the ground. 

They didn’t need to worry about dirtying the room up—they never did—Sarah was nice about cleaning everything. Afterall, Brendon was only one of many. The room had to be presentable for other appointments. 

Pete said, soft—nearly flirty, “on the contrary, dear.” 

Pete liked that. The pet names. Calling Brendon ‘dear’ or ‘sweet’ or ‘baby.’ Brendon never objected, of course, but he despised the terms. 

Although, if _Dallon_ was to call Brendon ‘baby’ or ‘dear’ or ‘sweet’—which he had never done in his life—Brendon might have felt differently about them. But all Dallon called him was B, or Bren, so… no dice. Pet names were horrid. 

“Your voice is to die for,” Pete purred and Brendon snorted. 

What a good joke, haha. Brendon was laughing. He was. You just couldn’t tell it on the outside. 

“So,” Pete went on, “not that I’m not… _thrilled_ , by your presence, but why so early? You’re not due ‘till the weekend.”

Pete was looking him over and, at one point, licked his lips. Brendon was used to the behavior. It had become boring to some extent by that point. It had bothered him a time ago. When he was eighteen and nineteen and Pete looked at him how a cat viewed a mouse but by the time he was twenty-two, they were just looks. Nothing more. 

Plus, it wasn’t bad. Pete was a good looking guy, for sure. Good smile, wide, and his eyes wrinkled at the corners. Not bad at all. Plus, he was a damn good lay. 

“Guess I couldn’t wait,” Brendon returned, just as sultry, and Pete’s eyes darkened. Brendon knew it wasn’t bad on Pete’s end either. He was a pretty damn good lay too. 

Pete’s eyes didn’t break from Brendon’s lips. “Bullshit.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agreed and took the pillow from his lap to put beside him without breaking his gaze. “But we could pretend it isn’t.”

He leaned in—fully prepared to kiss the older man—when, unexpectedly, Pete pulled back and Brendon was left jerking forward sharply to catch himself from falling face-first into Pete’s chest. He didn’t say any words but he whined out loud in disapproval. 

Pete grinned at him—the grin that made him tolerable—and said, “problems in paradise?”

Brendon sat back up, scowling, and he folded his arms over his bare chest. “None of your business.”

Pete’s eyes darkened instantly and the grin was gone. Oh shit. Brendon straightened, his shoulders going back. He let out a sharp breath. 

“Yeah,” he admitted, “you could say.”

Pete nodded. He looked down to his vest and his fingers went towards the buttons. “Dallon again, I assume.” 

“It’s always Dallon,” Brendon groaned and watched Pete begin to undo the garment. 

Pete smiled to himself as he continued to remove his vest. “What’d the tree do this time?”

“Wife’s in town,” was all Brendon had to say for Pete to know. “Came over tonight.”

“Ah.” Pete hummed, working the vest off his shoulders. “Who made dinner?”

Brendon flung himself back onto the bed to lay down, sinking into the plush blankets, his fingers folded together on his stomach. He stared up at the ceiling and the not-chandelier and the drapes. Heaven, huh? 

“ _I_ did, of course.”

“Uh-huh.” Pete dropped the vest to the floor. 

He was taking his time. Brendon had gotten undressed an hour ago, the moment Sarah had let him into the room. He knew the game. In fact, he had been naked in there so long he had opted to put his boxers back _on_. He picked at their waistband, rubbing at the base of his stomach. He was hungry. He hadn’t eaten. 

Pete asked, conversational as if they were just friends chatting—as if Pete wasn’t undressing himself as he talked, “what’d you make?”

“The carbonara.”

It was an old story. 

Pete made a sound of approval. “Breezy likes wine.”

“Merlot,” Brendon added bitterly, his scowl deepening. 

“Do _you_ want some wine?” Pete asked and Brendon turned his head to the side to see Pete working off the button-up that had been hiding beneath his vest. “I got you some Malbec, it’s in the cabinet beneath the sink in the bathroom. I’d be happy to get it.”

Brendon raised his eyebrows, leaning forward by using his elbows to prop himself up. He repeated, bemused, “Malbec?”

“It’s your favorite, isn’t it?” Pete had only unbuttoned the shirt halfway before tugging it up over his head. He didn’t get caught like Dallon had and Brendon didn’t laugh. 

He only nodded numbly. 

“Here.” Pete was shirtless. His chest was tan and Brendon liked to trace the tattoos with his eyes before his fingertips. “I’ll get it.”

Brendon hadn’t even said yes before Pete had exited back into the bathroom to retrieve the wine. Brendon stared at the door after him—Pete didn’t bother to close it and Brendon could see him bend over and pull a bottle of Malbec and two glasses from the cabinet. His jaw dropped slightly at the image and when Pete straightened back up to return, he had to make a conscious effort to snap it shut. 

“I don’t even remember telling you that,” Brendon marveled as Pete passed him a glass.

“You wouldn’t.” Pete poured himself some wine first. “You were high as a kite.”

“Oh.” Brendon listened to the splash of the red as it filled his glass. 

When Pete pulled back to set the bottle on the floor beside the bed—no tables—Brendon stared into his wine with wide eyes. He couldn’t see his own reflection in the blood-colored liquid, just a black shape of what he assumed was himself. No one at all. Just a mass. 

“How long is she over for?” Pete clinked his glass with Brendon’s and knocked back a sip as though it was whiskey. 

Brendon gazed up at him, clutching the neck of own glass tightly in his fist. Choking it. “Just tonight.”

Pete sent him a sideways glance. His wine was half drunk. “The whole night?” 

“Uh—” Brendon didn’t know. He hoped not. 

“Will Dallon fuck her, do you think?” Pete said it so passively. Just a possibility.

Brendon felt himself flinch at the words. He didn’t know. He hoped not. 

Pete drank the rest of his wine. He didn’t wait for an answer. “How long do _I_ have _you_?”

Brendon watched the empty glass in his companion’s fingers, held flippantly, loosely. If he dropped it, it would shatter on the carpet, and Pete wouldn’t give a damn. Could snap his fingers and someone would be by to clean it up. He could shatter any glass he wanted. 

Brendon held his closer. 

“Two hours,” he answered. Technically the whole night but he didn’t want to say that. Didn’t want that. He wanted to go home. 

Pete simpered. He put his glass on the ground beside the bottle. He jeered, “two whole hours! God _damn_ I could fuck you sideways in that time.”

Brendon found that the proper time to drink his wine. He loved Malbec. And, yet, it burned his throat. 

“When’s the last time Dallon fucked you?” Pete asked, hands tangling with his belt. As if, suddenly, he was in some sort of hurry. “You seem on edge. I don’t want a stiff fuck, you know what I like.”

Brendon spoke straight into his glass. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

“But the last time he fucked you?” Pete stressed. 

_Really?_ The one question he actually cared about the answer to. 

“I don’t know,” Brendon lied because he _did_ know and he knew it wasn’t as recent as Pete probably wanted it to be. Pete wanted within the last three days at most. But it was a week and a half ago, nine days exactly, that Brendon and Dallon had sex. 

They had watched T.V. together on the couch and Dallon had combed his fingers through Brendon’s hair over and over and over and Brendon made purred like a kitten to the touch. 

Dallon had said to him, “your hair is greasy as hell, when was the last time you showered?”

And Brendon had scoffed in offense, tilted his head up from Dallon’s thigh where it was resting, and said back, “yesterday, you dick. And you’re one to talk, your hair is practically dripping.”

Dallon had gone cross-eyed trying to look at his own hair and Brendon had laughed at him and after some playful teasing on both ends, it was decided they would save water and take a shower together. 

It had been sweet, standing together in the pouring water, Brendon complaining about the temperature and Dallon trying to actually clean himself while Brendon distracted him with kisses and random taps to random areas. 

All it had taken, though, was one rather poignant flick of Brendon’s pointer finger to the head of Dallon’s dick before Brendon found himself pressed against the slick tiles of the shower wall and Dallon’s tongue in his mouth. 

Couldn’t complain though, that was always what Brendon had been working up to. 

That night had been nice. And Brendon had woken up the next morning in a shared bed, tucked neatly into Dallon’s arms and the world had made perfect sense for the briefest of moments. 

Then Breezy came to town and the little Jenga tower of a relationship that Brendon had built for him and Dallon came tumbling down once again. He was pissed about it. He hated having to rebuild. 

“Day before yesterday,” Brendon said out loud, “but I was pretty drunk.”

Pete smiled, pleasantly surprised by the news. His belt hit the floor. “Good to hear.”

His pants came next and then he was in his underwear, sitting himself back onto the bed facing Brendon. His lips curled up. Was that a smile or a sneer? Brendon found it hard to tell.

“Might help, you know,” Pete said, inclining his head to the wine glass Brendon held. “Little liquid courage.”

“It’s _wine_ ,” Brendon returned, “I hardly think it’ll make a difference.”

“Hm. I think it might.” Pete used one finger to tilt the bottom of the glass up and against Brendon’s lips. Brendon didn’t object and downed the liquid easily. He did love Malbec after all. 

When he finished it, Pete reached out and took the glass from his fingers, placing it down on the carpet beside the bed with the other glasses. Brendon cast another glance at the bed’s tapestries. He wondered if the room was soundproof for what felt like the first time. 

Pete sat back up. He stared at Brendon’s face. 

Brendon watched Pete’s eyes map his features. 

Brendon’s own black eyes, the pupils of which were small and narrowed. His fat lips, parted enough to see his top teeth and his tongue, only good enough to taste. His hair, grown messy by an hour of aimlessly playing the curls in his own fingers, only good enough to be grabbed onto. The long fingers that sat in his lap, only good enough to holding steady on the sheets, nothing else. 

Brendon could tell Pete that he knew how to play the piano with those fingers; that he knew how to sing with that mouth. That his fingers were talented but what would be the point? He was only good for so much.

Pete reached out unprompted and took Brendon suddenly by the jaw, forcing the younger to lean toward him. 

He moved his fingers delicately over the millimeter long hair that had sprouted along Brendon’s jaw over the last week. Pete’s fingers were precise in their moves as they traced the skin and Brendon felt a short chill reach the base of his neck, uncomfortable, not being able to shake the feeling he was being examined for purchase. 

Like he was produce in a market, worth nothing more than a few dollars. 

Hoped he wasn’t out of date. 

“You’re usually clean-faced,” Pete examined aloud, contemplatively, not removing his eyes from the bottom half of Brendon’s face, chin still trapped in Pete’s hand. “Why the change?”

“What?” Brendon quirked a brow. “You don’t like it?”

Pete glanced up. His eyes said what his mouth didn’t have to; _that isn’t what I asked you._

“Haven’t seemed to be enough hours in the day,” Brendon explained, trying to keep his tone as casual as possible. “I’ve been meaning to but I’ve been… I’ve been running wild these days. Hasn’t been enough time.”

Pete chuckled mirthlessly. “Mhm. I’m sure.”

He didn’t say anything else as he grazed a gentle thumb along the base of Brendon’s lower lip, pulling at it barely to better expose the rest of his mouth.

Brendon attempted to relax in the grip, tried to convince his body not to be so stiff. Pete didn’t like a stiff fuck, after all. 

However, Pete’s hand shifted—faster than Brendon would have thought possible—and clenched around his neck. 

Brendon audibly choked, not because of the tightness of the grip but the sheer shock of the action, and he resisted the urge to grab Pete’s wrist to pull him off. 

Pete didn’t squeeze. He held on, his hand around Brendon’s throat, fingers just beneath his jaw bone, pressing up. Not maliciously, not dangerous. Waiting. Warning. 

Pete stared at his own hand—more importantly, the neck it was attached to. 

He hummed to himself. Stroked at the fuzz with the pad of his thumb again. “Makes you look older.”

Brendon didn’t say a word. He hadn’t been asked a question. He knew how the game was played. 

Using his hold on Brendon’s neck, Pete poked a finger into the base of his cheek, turning his head to the side, away, so Brendon could no longer see what Pete was doing. Again, goosebumps edged up Brendon’s back. He didn’t like not being able to see.

“You’re very pretty, you know.” Pete’s voice was low and he kept Brendon facing away from him, unable to see the expression he was making. Brendon stared straight ahead at the wall. Pete went on, “prettier than when you were younger; age suits you.”

Brendon swallowed subconsciously, his jugular bouncing against Pete’s palm and Pete laughed as it did. 

“What?” he asked. “All these years, and I’ve still got you nervous?”

“I’m not nervous.” It was harder to speak with Pete’s hand against his voice box but he managed. 

Pete gave a small squeeze with his hand and Brendon inhaled sharply. “What are you then?”

“What’s the word?” 

Brendon memorized the eggshell-colored paint of the wall opposite the bed. It would have been a much prettier room if there were windows. If the walls were thinner. If people could hear. 

No one would know if Pete one day decided to snap and kill Brendon. No one would care. Pete could shatter him like any other old glass and then Sarah would come by and sweep him up. 

Just another appointment. 

He said, “anticipatory.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could make out Pete smile at the word. 

“You were very pretty when you were young too though,” the man said as if reminiscing. 

Pete removed his hand from Brendon’s neck slowly, not pulling it off his skin entirely, but trailing it down onto his bare collar bones and sternum instead. 

Brendon breathed a sigh of relief which, no doubt, Pete heard. 

“You remember being that pretty?” Pete asked him. 

Brendon moved his head back to face Pete. Their eyes met and Brendon tried his best not to feel small. Held Pete’s dark eyes in his own stare. Let Pete’s hand stroke across the skin of his chest, fingernails passing over his pectoral. 

“I do,” he said, keeping his own hands in his lap. 

And he did. He remembered when he was eighteen years old, standing in front of a man five years his senior, trying not to let them know he was shaking in his muddy boots. 

Remembered wearing his only nice outfit, a white button-up and a black tie, the shirt wrinkled because he had forgotten to iron it. Remembered how young he had looked with his wide eyes and his unbrushed hair that hung over his forehead. He had worn glasses back then. 

He remembered Pete smiling at him after he had asked the question. How the older man’s eyes had flashed as he considered the proposal. 

“And my payment?” Pete had asked. His eyes had not been on Brendon’s face. 

Brendon _had_ been nervous then. Hadn’t let it show though; had tilted his head to the side how a puppy would and asked, as sweet as he could, “what do you want?”

Pete’s grin had been broad. Sharp teeth. “I assume you don’t have any money.”

“No sir,” Brendon had said, “I’m financially unavailable at this time.”

“Ah.” Pete had nodded and his look of understanding had been fake. Brendon could tell that by the way his eyes had flickered with unhidden delight. He skimmed his eyes over Brendon’s wrinkled white shirt. Had asked, “how old did you say you were, Brendon?”

“Eighteen.” Which had been the truth. 

Pete had again seemed pleased. He had no hesitation saying, “awful young to be asking such a question.”

“It’s true,” Brendon had replied, “but age is just a number, right? And when you need something done, you need something done, no matter how old you are. Besides, I can make up for it.”

Pete had raised a brow. His smile never faded. “You a virgin, Brendon?”

Brendon hadn’t broken eye contact for a second. “Do you want me to be one?”

Pete’s eyes had darkened significantly and his smile curled up even further if it was possible. “You’ve got a sense of humor, I assume?”

Brendon had shrugged. “I could be funny if I tried.”

“You smart?” Pete had purred, drumming his fingertips on the arm of his chair. His tone was joking, keeping it light. Or as light as the atmosphere could be when Brendon could make out the silhouette of two guns just on the table to his left. “Can you carry on a conversation?”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Brendon had said, “often find it hard to shut my mouth.”

Pete had surveyed him again and his eyes had rested on Brendon’s lips. “I bet.”

He had paused only a moment more before he shook his head and said to Brendon, “I assume you’re gay.”

“Yessir.” Brendon had nodded. He had been gay. Was still gay. Would be gay for the foreseeable future.

“How many men?” Pete had asked. 

“Have I been with?”

An inclination of the head. 

Brendon thought about it briefly, wet his lips which Pete didn’t miss, his eyes trained on Brendon’s mouth, even when he spoke, “three now.”

“Hm.” Pete had pressed his own lips into a firm line. “You love any of them?”

“Not a big believer in love, Mr. Wentz.”

Pete’s smile had been so wide and bright. “It’s Pete. C’mon up, Brendon, and shake my hand. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

In his bedroom, nearly seven years later, Pete brushed a hand over Brendon’s bare chest and his nails scratched at the flesh. Another warning. 

“You regret shaking my hand?” Pete asked and he opened his palm up further, making his way to Brendon’s stomach. 

Brendon sat frozen, simply letting Pete rub at his skin, massage, poke and prod as he pleased. He tilted his chin down to watch Pete’s fingers do their dance across his flesh. It tickled a bit but he didn’t say anything. He shook his head. “I don’t. I got what I wanted.”

“And I get what I want.” 

Pete used a firm hand to push Brendon back. On instinct, Brendon laid down on the cotton sheets of the bed, folding his hands on his stomach once again. His fingers twitched. 

Pete held him down with a hand to his chest. He leaned over Brendon, hovering a few inches above his face. 

Brendon felt one of Pete’s hands lift his knee up, the other prying at his boxers. He moved around to get more comfortable. A practiced smile skated over his face. He said, right below Pete’s ear—a whisper of sorts, “you always do.”

“You’re right.” Pete slid his hand past Brendon’s stomach. “I always do.”

After Pete was done, Brendon always took forty minutes in the shower. It was a habit. Washed his hair and his face and his body and his body twice and his body three times and sometimes—if he was planning on being with Dallon later—would wash the inside of his mouth. 

The soap had terrible flavor, but Brendon managed. He didn’t want Dallon and Pete’s tastes to mix. 

The thought in and of itself was enough to make him sick. 

By the time he finished his deep scrub, Pete would be gone along with his clothes and Sarah would already be in the room, cleaning up. 

This time was no different. Brendon exited the bathroom, towel wrapped around his lower half. Almost always it was slung too loose and Sarah would tease him for showing off too much. 

“What’s even the point of wearing it?” she would say. “If you’re going to show everything off?”

“It’s a matter of fashion,” Brendon would return and Sarah would laugh and offer him his clothes. 

This time when he sauntered out of the bathroom, though, he had a limp, and his towel was drawn tighter than usual. Not too tight, but tight enough. 

Sarah had retrieved the wine and held the glasses in one hand and the neck of the bottle in the other while she worked. She glanced up upon hearing the door open and sent him a quick smile, brushing black hair from her face. 

“Ah,” she cheered, “if it isn’t my five o’clock.”

Brendon smiled tiredly at her. He muttered, “hey, Sarah.”

Sarah’s grin shifted into a grimace upon impact and she slacked, eyebrows creasing in concern. “Woah, what’s wrong with you?”

Brendon made his way to the bed, holding his towel with one hand. He winced as he sat down and Sarah was beside him in a second. He really shouldn’t have lied about how recently he had been with Dallon. A few more minutes prep would have done a world of difference. 

“Urie,” Sarah pressed, obviously worried, “what the hell?”

“I lied,” was what he said, fluttering his eyes shut. 

“About?”

He leaned back to lay down. He could get the covers wet, Sarah was going to change them in twenty minutes anyway. “How long.” 

Sarah made a face. “How long since—”

“Since I last—”

“Oh.” Sarah’s face drowned. “And he—”

“Skipped—”

“Skipped!” she cried. “Brendon, you have got to stop letting him do that. Or better yet, tell the fucking truth.” 

Sarah sat down on the bed beside him, abandoning the wine on the floor. Brendon put his palms over his eyes. It wasn’t the first time it had happened. Wouldn’t be the last. Sarah knew the drill. Knew what an idiot he was and would continue to be.

“I’ll be fine by Thursday,” he grunted. 

“You should be fine _today_ ,” Sarah snapped. 

“Sorry I disappointed you, Mom,” he deadpanned and Sarah rolled her eyes, turning away from him. “I’ll be better next time.”

“How long had it been?” she asked after a beat. Her blue eyes made their way back and he turned his own away.

“Nine.”

“Oh.” She nodded knowingly. “Not too bad.”

“Nope.” He sat up. “Like I said. I’ll be fine.”  
He stood to get his pants. She stayed seated on the bed. 

When he bent over, he hissed between his teeth. But it wasn’t audible so it wasn’t real. Didn’t count. He straightened back up, clothes in hand and sent her a wide grin. It was an impressive one. Very close to real. 

“You worry me,” she whispered.

“C’mon, Sar.” He winked. “I worry everyone.” 

“You shouldn’t.” She watched him pick up his shirt from the floor. Another not-real hiss. 

“Why not?” he grumbled, easing the shirt on. 

When his towel slid, Sarah could most likely make out the three sharp lines of red where Pete’s fingernails had left their greetings. Also fine. They would be gone by Thursday too. Brendon just had to make sure not to be intimate with Dallon until then. 

It wouldn’t be that hard though. Breezy had been by for dinner. Brendon wouldn’t get to be intimate with Dallon until Sunday at least. 

“Because I’m an evil little man,” Brendon sang as he put his boxers on. “What can I say? I’m practically Satan.”

Sarah sighed. “You’re not Satan.”

“You can’t prove that.” Brendon worked his pants on painstakingly. Inch by inch. “I could be the devil if I wanted to be. Maybe, beneath this human form, I’m hiding a demon.”

“Would explain your personality,” Sarah said.

He snorted. “Thanks.”

Sarah propped an elbow on her knee and her chin in that hand. “You’re an angel, Urie, and you know it.”

Brendon sent her a look. “So was Lucifer once y’know.”

“Stop comparing yourself to the devil.” Sarah glared at him.

“Whatever for, beautiful?” Brendon slunk into his coat. One arm after the other. “I’m going to Hell, aren’t I?”

“We’re all going to Hell.” Sarah let out a long exhale through her nose. Her voice was angry. “ _Especially_ Pete.”

“Great.” Brendon fixed his collar. “Then I can be a whore there too.”

Sarah whined from the bottom of her throat. She sounded so sad and it almost made him feel guilty. “ _Brendon_.” 

“Love you, Sar. Gotta go. Dallon’s probably waiting up.” Brendon bent and kissed her on the cheek so that he wouldn’t have to say anymore. “I’ll see you Saturday.”

Sarah made a sound of protest but didn’t audibly say it. So, just like Brendon’s hiss, it wasn’t even real. 

He let the bedroom door swing shut behind him on his way out. Then he trailed down the stairs. Down and down and down and down some more. Maybe if he kept going, he could find Hell. He could have taken the elevator but with every step his body hurt worse, and he felt like he deserved it. 

So down the stairs he went. One after the other like his sleeves and his pants and his meetings with Pete. 

If he wasn’t in Hell yet, the least he could do was manufacture it on earth. 

It was a lovely Hotel that Pete owned. The Wentz. Wasn’t very original. But Pete didn’t seem the kind to care about wordplay. Just like ‘Fuck Room.’ He said what made the most sense. 

Brendon eased his way down the five flights and found himself in the lobby, treading across carpet far too fancy to be on the base level. 

The bellhop—Patrick—yipped like a puppy as he walked by. He made sure not to sway, not to limp, no such thing. He stood tall and flashed Patrick a returning dip of his head. Patrick was sweet after all. He wasn’t going to Hell. He was one of the few. 

“Hey, Pat,” Brendon greeted. _Keep it up. Keep it up_. 

The smile stung and every step seared.

“Hi there, Mr. Urie,” Patrick said back eagerly. He hurried to open the front door for Brendon. “How was your meeting?”

“Ah, you know Pete.” Brendon forced that smile to stay up. He had practiced so many times, it shouldn’t be so hard. “He’s a hard one to persuade.”

“Mr. Wentz sticks to his guns,” Patrick agreed, “but I’m sure you’ll see eye to eye eventually.”

“I’m sure we will too,” Brendon said through gritted teeth. 

“Do you have a follow-up meeting?” Patrick asked, unaware. “Anything I need to inform anyone of?”

“I’ve already set it up,” Brendon returned. His legs hurt. “But I appreciate it, Pat, you know I do.”

“Of course, Mr. Urie.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Brendon chided as he slipped through the door. “It’s been two years Pat, you can call me Brendon.”

Patrick flushed pink. “R-right, of course. Terribly sorry sir.”

Brendon passed him a ten-dollar bill that was hiding in the pocket of his— _Pete_ ’s coat—and Patrick accepted the money with joy. Actual joy. 

Brendon winked the second time that day. “I’ll see you Saturday, Pat.”

Patrick was pink again. “O-of course, Mr. Urie. I—”

“Brendon!” he corrected in a shout as the glass door swung shut behind him and he stepped out onto the dirty streets of Downpour. He took in a deep breath and the oil and grease filled his nostrils. He breathed it out in a sigh. Never got old. 

He headed in the direction of home.

Although he only got about thirty steps down the asphalt before he heard footsteps trailing behind him. Was someone calling his name?

“Brendon!” it yelled. “Brendon! You! Freemont!”

Brendon frowned in confusion, crinkling his nose. 

“Freemont! Hey!”

He turned. 

His eyes went big as he saw who was calling his name. Wow. Now this was a turn of events. He exclaimed, “Ghost!”

And there he came down the street on loud boots, the man from the graveyard, striding with purpose towards Brendon with his own confusion written on his face. 

Suddenly, Brendon was smiling genuinely. 

“Finally,” Ghost heaved out, coming to stand in front of Brendon, breathing in pants. “God, I said your name like ten times, you freak, why didn’t you slow down?”

“I didn’t hear you.” Brendon couldn’t stop smiling. He paused, hearing the way Ghost struggled to breathe. He snickered. “Did you… did you chase me down?”

“What?” Ghost reared back in alarm. He seemed offended by the accusation and he gaped, as if trying to come up with a plausible argument. Ghost seemed the kind to argue. 

Brendon folded his arms, cocking his head to the side. He was waiting. 

“I—” Ghost blubbered. “No, I wasn’t. I was just—I was uh—”

“I thought you said you were a writer,” Brendon interrupted. 

Again, Ghost was perplexed. “What? I am.”

“Shouldn’t writers be better liars?” Brendon asked. 

Ghost spluttered. 

His cheeks were rosy and the tip of his nose was red. The kid looked cold. Freezing actually, Brendon thought, with the way fog parted his grey lips and his shoulders shivered. He was in nothing but a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. It had to be about forty degrees. Poor guy. 

Brendon liked it, though. The way Ghost’s nose was pink and his copper-colored eyes darted in search of an answer somewhere in the air and his hair flipped back in the wind. He was cute. 

Ghost brandished a finger at him. “I am an _incredible_ liar.”

Brendon laughed. He raised his hands in defense. “Of course you are.”

Ghost bared his teeth. 

“You finish your speech yet?” Brendon wanted to know. 

That seemed to send Ghost for a loop as he reared back, those shiny eyes going big and round. “I—Uh.”

“Shouldn’t you be working on that then?” Brendon joked. “When’s it due? You want an A-plus don’t you? Every day it’s late, they dock points.”

“Screw you,” Ghost spat, “it’s not an English paper.”

Brendon laughed again. “God, you’re a bitch.”

Ghost screeched. “I’m not a bitch! You’re a Fr—” 

“Freemont Fucker Freak, uh-huh.” Brendon nodded. “You must be a terrible writer. You can’t come up with anything original.”

“Fuck you,” Ghost seethed.

“Fuck _you_.”

Brendon was having too much fun with this man. He liked Ghost. He was an angry little thing, skinny enough to be a lamp post and angry enough to be a pit bull in a dog fight. Or, well, more like a chihuahua in a dog fight. Even though he was about a head taller than Brendon, he seemed so small.

“I don’t like you,” Ghost snarled, leaning back in satisfaction. As if that was the insult to end all insults.

“Okay,” Brendon said. “I didn’t ask you to.”

“I—” Ghost seemed confused again. 

“Well—” Brendon clapped his hands together once. “Nice seeing you, Ghost, but I have—”

“My name isn’t fucking Ghost, you fuck!” Ghost shouted. 

Brendon smiled again. “Okay? Well, what is it? You’ve never offered to tell me.”

Ghost made a face like he couldn’t decide if he was going to tell the truth or not. He started, “it’s Jo—”

“Lie.”

Ghost’s eyes bugged. “What?”

“That’s a lie.” Brendon folded his arms. “That’s not your name.”

Ghost looked like he may explode “You didn’t even let me finish.”

“Didn’t need to.” Brendon’s smirk was evil. “I could sense it. I can see these sorts of things. I got an, uh, eye for it, if you will.”

Ghost blinked long and slow. He took a breath to steady himself. “Fine. Y’know what? _Fine_. My name is Ryan. It’s Ryan. Fuck you then.”

Huh. Ryan. Brendon skimmed his lanky… friend wasn’t the right word… up and down. It fit alright. 

“Ryan…?” He waved a hand.

Begrudgingly, “Ross.”

“Ryan Ross.”

Yeah, that fit. That fit well.

“Well then, it’s a real pleasure to meet you, Ryan Ross.”

He extended a hand. Ghost—Ryan—looked it up and down with skepticism before reluctantly snatching it and shaking once, twice, three times. As many times as Brendon washed his body in the shower after Pete. The perfect number to get the job done. 

Ryan pulled back. His hand was frigid. His fingertips were blue. 

“Damn,” Brendon said, eyes directed at the digits. “Your fingers are gonna fall off.”

“What?” Ryan’s eyes frantically landed on his hands. Legitimate worry crossed his features. “No they’re not.”

“Here.” 

Without even thinking about it, Brendon was removing his rabbit gloves and handing them over. He didn’t even give himself time to debate. To think about how mad Pete would be. Not even a second. He just handed them over. 

“Huh? No.” Ryan shook his head. “No, I couldn’t just—What the fuck? I don’t know you—”

“Take ‘em.” Brendon shoved them into Ryan’s chest. “I heard your speech, dumbass, remember? I know you’re broke. Take the charity.”

“I—” Ryan glared at him. “I don’t need anything from—”

“From anyone, you take care of yourself, yada yada, your fingers are two hours away from no longer being fingers. Take the fucking gloves, Ghost.”

Ryan gaped for a moment but, finally, he conceded and accepted the gift. He slid the gloves onto himself. He seemed surprised they fit. 

“Wow,” he mumbled, turning them over to admire their leather. As much as Brendon hated them, they _were_ pretty to look at. 

Brendon shoved his bare hands into Pete’s jacket to keep them warm. “No problem. It’s a pleasure.”

Brendon had every intention to leave then. Let that be the end of it. But Ryan narrowed his eyes and he asked, loudly, “what’s the P stand for?”

Brendon flinched. “The what?”

“The P.” Ryan pointed one gloved finger at the wrist of the other glove. Sure enough, in silver lettering was a stark P stamped onto the leather. Brendon knew on the other wrist there was sure to be a W. “What’s it stand for?”

“My name has a P in it,” Brendon blurted. 

Ryan looked up at him. “Your name is Brendon Urie.”

“The P is silent.”

Ryan smirked. “I know when someone’s lying too. C’mon. What’s it stand for?”

Brendon stared at him. And he said the first thing that came to mind. “Penis.”

“What?”

“Pecker.”

Ryan blinked. “ _What_?”

“Prick,” Brendon said. 

“What the fuck are you—” 

“Fine, you want correct terminology,” Brendon said, throwing his hands up, “it stands for Phallus.”

Ryan was gazing, wide-eyed, like he couldn’t believe it. “Are you—”

“Plonker.”

“Did you just say _plonker_?” Ryan’s eyebrows met his hairline. 

“Well, it’s better than saying Pussy.”

“What the fuck are you _on_?” Ryan asked, absolutely bewildered. “Are you a pervert or something?”

“Yes!” Brendon agreed, excited. “That’s what the P stand for.”

Ryan cackled, his eyes still big. “You—”

“Fine.” Brendon sighed. “It stands for my middle name. P-Patrick.”

Ryan gave him a knowing look. “You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

Ryan turned the other glove over. “So what’s this W stand for then?”

“Weiner.”

Ryan promptly fell into a fit of laughter and Brendon followed suit. Two psychos in the middle of the sidewalk of Downpour, too close to a whore hotel, bent over and losing it. Perhaps that was what the P stood for. 

Psycho.

“Alright, alright.” Ryan straightened up. He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. Brendon was happy to find it was real. “Don’t tell me. Mystery is fun. I’ll make something up.”

“Write me a story?” Brendon suggested. 

“Sure,” Ryan agreed, beaming, “I will.”

Brendon opened his mouth to joke back but suddenly there was a buzz from his pocket; his phone had gone off. He scrambled to check it, finding the text on his home screen. 

Dallon: (9:07) _were ar you? Miss tou_

Brendon had to physically pull his eyes away from the screen. Dallon was drunk. Dallon was drunk. Something must have happened with Breezy. Something bad. 

“Hey, uh—” Brendon shoved his phone back in his pocket in a rush. “I gotta go.”

Ryan continued to smile. His smile was so _nice_. Authentic. Nothing planned or faked to make Brendon give him something. Just a smile. 

Brendon returned it without question. And it didn’t hurt his cheeks like usual.

Ryan said, “nice seeing you again, Brendon, even if you are a pervert.”

Brendon chortled. His following reply was oddly quiet to his own ears. Intimate for a dirty street. “Yeah. Yeah, you too, Ryan.”

They shared a look for another beat. Something made sense.

Brendon’s phone buzzed a second time. 

“Fuck,” he mumbled, turning down. “I—”

He looked up, ready to say goodbye for the second time but he didn’t have to. Ryan Ross was gone from the sidewalk, Pete Wentz’s fur gloves along with him. 

Brendon was alone again, breathing in oil and grease. 

And, suddenly, his fingers were cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	5. Boy, Do You Belong Beside Somebody?

Ryan was having a shitty day. He called himself a writer so, hypothetically, he should have had a better description than ‘shitty’ to encapsulate his existence but he didn’t. ‘Shitty’ was the only word that made sense. 

Ryan Ross was having a shitty day and there were no other words to describe it. 

There were many reasons _why_ , however. Why he was having the shitty day to end all shitty days. 

For one, he was back in Downpour. That was the largest reason. 

He was back in Downpour, in his old best friend’s apartment, after promising himself he was never going to go back. He had never meant to; it had never been the plan. But there he was, seven years later, right back to where he’d started and he was the same goddamn man. 

It’d be different, perhaps, if he was a _better_ person, or if he had changed, or if he had made anything of himself at all. But no. No, Ryan Ross was the same exact man he had been seven years ago except now he was twenty-six with deeper bags beneath his eyes, dirtier hair, and more visible ribs. 

See, Ryan Ross had some simple realizations about the world. 

One; the only reason you were alive was because you were born and you hadn’t died yet. And two; you weren’t worth anything at all until you were worth _something_. And Ryan had one single mission in the world. To be worth something. 

Anything to be worth something, that’s the Ryan Ross moto.

And, by darn it, he _was_ going to be worth something. Ryan Ross was going to be somebody in a nobody world if it killed him. Felt as if he was the only person who believed that, but he was going to make the rest of the world sure of it too.

That was how, when he was eighteen, begging for purpose, Ryan Ross ended up a self-proclaimed writer, toting around a ratty notebook and tucking a pencil behind his ear wherever he went. He was under the impression that if he wrote something worth something then, by association, he would be worth something too. 

Ryan Ross had plans to write a story. A worthwhile story that had all the ears in the world perked to listen. 

But there he was, seven years later on a sofa that wasn’t his own, not a story to his name. 

That was the first reason he was having a shitty day. 

The second was that the sofa he was sitting on that didn’t belong to him, belonged to one Jon Walker. And the problem with that was that Jon Walker belonged to a girl named Cassie. And they _loved_ each other. 

For the first hour and a half that Ryan spent on that sofa, he was subjected to _love_ every second. Cassie and Jon dancing around each other—Cassie actually in clothes this time but it didn’t seem to make a difference; Jon never stopped undressing her with his eyes—all the while assuring Ryan that, ‘no, no we don’t need anything! You just sit there and get comfortable! Our home is your home! Just relax! You must be tired. Your dad died after all, so sad, oh, so sad.’

The ‘oh, so sad’ part was mostly thanks to Cassie who didn’t yet understand like Jon did that Ryan couldn’t care less about his father’s death. The only reason he had come back to Downpour at all was because he had a certain obligation. 

It was what a man was meant to do. 

He didn’t care about his dad. Took him a good five years to fully wrap his head around it but he didn’t care about his dad. Nope. Not a sliver.

Jon would probably sit Cassie down at some point in the near future and tell her when Ryan wasn’t there to witness it. That was what couples did, right? Tell each other secrets they couldn’t tell anyone else. Ryan wouldn’t complain if he did. Jon belonged to Cassie and Ryan in a sense belonged to Jon so really his secrets were Cassie’s too and if Cassie had any secrets, by God, he’d keep them if he was asked. 

Not that he was any good a liar. 

But Cassie was a nice young lady, obnoxiously beautiful, and she seemed to be exactly what Jon Walker needed. Ryan appreciated it, that someone was taking care of Jon in his absence. After all, Jon had been so adamant on taking care of him. Although, it then made Ryan extremely irritated that he didn’t have Jon to take care of him anymore. Didn’t have anyone at all. 

Well, not entirely true. Back in Downpour he had his friends, Jac and Keltie and Keltie was great at dog-sitting for him and Jac was great for a night on the town—she was _incredible_ at getting drunk—but that wasn’t caring. That was… avoiding, dancing, playing. None of that was real. Those were friendships for show, not much else. 

Cassie and Jon? That was behind the scenes, that was after the curtain was drawn, that was _real_. And, frankly, Ryan hated it. 

So, to recap, the first reason he was having a shitty day was because he was right back where he had been seven years ago. The second reason he was having a shitty day was because Jon and Cassie loved one another and the third reason was because Jon was always right. 

It was infuriating. Absolutely mind-blowingly fury inducing that Jon Walker was the sort of simple, by the book man, that was intelligent enough to be correct all of the time. 

This would be in reference to when Ryan was sitting on the couch, a blanket pooled in his lap, as Cassie and Jon wandered around each other through the kitchen, absently touching each other’s arms or backs as they passed, and Jon paused halfway into the kitchen to let his eyes land on Ryan. 

He seemed to think for a second before he asked, “Ryan, what’re you gonna do for the rest of today?”

And Ryan said back with no thought attached, “I don’t know. Figured I’d just mourn for a while or—”

Jon cocked a hip. “I’m serious now.”

“I am too,” Ryan argued, “I’ve only been in town a day, after all. I deserve time to—”

“You need to go to St. James is what you need to do,” Jon told him matter-of-factly, folding his arms and staring Ryan down how Ryan assumed a mother would. But he’d never had a mother so he didn’t really know for sure.

“What?” Ryan asked, eyes big. “Why would I have to go to the church _now_ ; I—”

“You have to plan a funeral, you moron,” Jon reprimanded. 

Ryan cursed him mentally, but said aloud, “it’s really no rush; I don’t have to go toni—”

“Well, what else would you be doing?” Jon questioned and Ryan glowered at him. “Now’s as good a time as any. His body’s not getting any riper you know. Honestly, Ryan, what in the world else would you do?”

“ _Mourn_ ,” Ryan growled through gritted teeth.

Jon raised an eyebrow and Ryan scowled, throwing his hands up. 

“Fine,” he sighed, arms in the air, “y’know what? Fine. I’ll go to the church and I’ll leave you and Cassie to do whatever it is that couples do.”

“Have sex,” Jon answered.

Ryan stood off the couch in an instant, collecting his blanket with him. “You didn’t have to say it outright.”

“Where would be the fun in subtext?” Jon teased as he followed Ryan through the living room. 

“There would be decency in it s’all I’m saying.” Ryan wrapped the blanket up around his body. He was wearing clothes—the same ones he had entered with—but something about the blanket felt necessary. As if he couldn’t get comfort any other way. 

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Jon was saying but it didn’t really mean anything; Ryan had to do whatever he said, that would be the rule so long as he was sleeping on Jon’s couch. 

As long as Ryan was in Downpour, he was a setting piece and nothing more. Jon was the set designer and Ryan was meant to stay wherever he was moved. Such were the rules of theatre. 

“I just think it would be a smart idea to get it over with,” Jon reasoned, and Ryan hated that it was reasonable. “I’ll come with you if you really want me to—”

“No. Don’t,” Ryan shot back and he gestured with a hand over his shoulder without looking Jon’s way. “Stay here, have sex with your wife.”

“Girlfriend,” Jon noted and Ryan smiled to himself. 

“Girlfriend, yeah, whatever.”

He fumbled to find his wallet on the coffee table. He had only been there about two hours and he had already turned the living room into half a home, his suitcase open on the floor beside the sofa and his notebooks stacked on the living room table. Soon enough, there would be ink stains wherever he sat. Could track his whereabouts by following the black dots. 

“Don’t even worry about it, I’ll get out of your hair and you and her can have your little—” Ryan made a kissing sound to the air— “Time. I know how it is. Young love, yadda yadda, you’re a couple of rabbits.”

Jon rolled his eyes but a smile was present. “Call me Bugs Bunny—” and then in a terrible impressionistic style— “What’s up, Doc?”

Ryan turned in a circle, finger raised, as he dropped the blanket back onto the sofa with one outstretched arm. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Jon tilted his head to the side and Ryan hated how endearing the expression was. “You don’t like it? Cassie thinks it’s a serious turn on.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Ryan said at the same time Cassie’s voice trailed in from the bedroom as she walked into the room, “no, I don’t.”

She came up easily, that charming smile wide, to stand beside Jon and one of her hands rested on the small of his back. Ryan tried not to let his eyes linger, and tried harder not to laugh because honestly? Since when was Jon Walker the girl?

“Ryan,” she asked easily, “you goin’ somewhere?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Was gonna head to Spencer’s, I think; catch up.”

“Oh, how nice!” Cassie cheered, eager. “I hear from Jon you guys were like the fantastic three or something.”

“Four,” Jon said to his side, frowning. 

“What?” 

“It’s Fantastic _Four_ , not three and I never—I never said that, to clarify.” His eyes went back to Ryan. “And shouldn’t you be headed somewhere else? Somewhere more _important_?”

Ryan tapped on his chin pensively. “Huh… No… Can’t think of anything more important than the rekindling of an old friendship.” 

Jon raised his brows which was as much of a warning as Ryan was going to get. “Hm. I see. Well… if you think of something else…”

Ryan glowered. “We’ll see how I feel at the end of the day.”

He turned to catapult himself out the door before Jon or Cassie or their unabiding love for each other could stop him but Jon called after him, “don’t stay out too late, honey. Curfew’s at midnight.”

Ryan flipped him the bird over his shoulder. “I’m a grown-ass, man. Shut up.”

Jon and Cassie laughed together and it sounded like a harmony. Ryan didn’t slam the door behind him but he considered it. He really considered it. 

Jon had told Ryan—while he had been dancing about with Cassie—that Spencer lived deeper into Downpour in a small apartment building. Apparently he worked at a Casino or something like that and it didn’t pay very well. Which had confused Ryan because since when was Spencer in anything other than banking? He hadn’t asked Jon but judging by the way Jon’s simple eyes darted to the left when he said it, Ryan assumed that something had gone down. Most likely something between Spencer and his dad. 

A son hating his father to the point of running away? Ryan and he should start a club. 

Jon could be an honorary member even though he actually had a father that loved him. Loser. 

Ryan sulked as he maneuvered his way through Downpour streets, that horrific stench of grease digging into his nostrils. He sniffed several times to try and dissuade it but it came back just as strong every time. 

The buildings towered around him, dark windows so you couldn’t make out the sins committed inside, and cars that honked repeatedly. People in Downpour were pricks. Honestly, Ryan fit in there far more than in Esteban. 

In Esteban—although it was its own big city with its own thick smells and towering buildings—people were kind. Jon Walker would have fit better in Esteban; perhaps Ryan and he should trade places. Although, Jon worked in criminal defense and that business was certainly more prosperous in Downpour. More criminals, after all. 

But, small details aside, Ryan hated Downpour and he hated the people and he hated that he was the same man he had always been. He was having a shitty fucking day. 

“Brendon!” a voice called out from a building directly beside Ryan. 

He turned with a start in the direction of the sound to find an excruciatingly familiar figure come waltzing out of a ritzy hotel, a wide grin balanced on his handsome face, waving a goodbye to the red-cheeked ginger holding the door ajar for him. 

It was that Freemont freak from the graveyard. And he was smiling so annoyingly wide—the smile had to be fake, no one smiled like that—and wearing his bulky rich kid coat but his dirty boots swayed across the pavement and Ryan was having a shitty day—a shitty life—and by the looks of it this freak from the graveyard was having the best time he could. 

And, to be completely honest, it pissed Ryan off how happy this guy was. 

So, before his mind could properly catch up with his mouth, he had turned and started toward the other man calling out, “Brendon! Brendon! You! Freemont!”

Because, really, it was this or Spencer or church and Ryan hated churches and he didn’t know Spencer.

Although Brendon didn’t hear him—or pretended not to, more likely—and continued down the street. This made Ryan even more angry and he bared his teeth, starting to jog after him. 

“Freemont!” he shouted. “Hey!”

He got nearly halfway down the street before Brendon finally turned around and that fury-inducing grin cracked twice as wide as he returned eagerly, “Ghost!”

Ryan felt like steam was coming out of his ears. How could this guy be so fucking happy? What did he have that Ryan didn’t? Why did _he_ get to be happy? 

Ryan was panting as he came to a halt. “Finally. God, I said your name like ten times, you freak, why didn’t you slow down?”

Brendon kept smiling at him and there was a certain softness to his black eyes when he tilted his head that momentarily made Ryan forget he was pissed. But then he asked, “did you chase me down?” and Ryan’s rage resurfaced. 

He denied the allegation instantly, because obviously he did not chase him down. Brendon, Freemont Freak from the graveyard, was not worth a chase down. What a self absorbed prick that he thought he was. 

“I thought you were a writer,” Brendon said and Ryan frowned, acknowledging that he was, in fact, a writer. Brendon asked, “shouldn’t writers be better liars?”

How dare he. Ryan was… Well, Ryan was a terrible liar but that didn’t give Brendon the excuse to call him out on it. God, what was wrong with this guy? Why was he still smiling? And so, even though it was a lie, Ryan shot back, “I’m an _incredible_ liar.”

Brendon seemed incredulous and he scoffed gingerly saying, “sure you are” and Ryan half expected him to tack on a ‘sweetie’ at the end. 

Ryan glowered. 

“You finish your speech yet?” Brendon asked him, completely unprompted, and Ryan tried not to look too thrown off by it. Because he _was_ most certainly thrown off by it. Brendon asked, “shouldn’t you be working on that then? When’s it due? You want an A-plus, don’t you? Every day it’s late, they dock points.”

And how dare he. 

How dare a man Ryan not know make fun of Ryan’s dead father that he hated and would most likely be making his own jokes with Spencer in twenty minutes. No. Completely out of line. 

Ryan spat, “screw you. It’s not an English paper.”

Ryan would have cared more about an English paper. 

Brendon laughed, such a pleasurable sound, like he was really enjoying the laugh that came from his throat and he said, “god, you’re a bitch.”

Which, admittedly, Ryan was. He was being an absolute bitch and he knew it. He did. But we all have those days, don’t we? Ryan was having one of those fucking days. “I’m not a bitch! You’re a fr—”

“Freemont Fucker Freak, uh-huh.” And the way Brendon said it, he merely sounded bored. Like he’d heard it one too many times before. “You must be a terrible writer. You can’t come up with anything original.”

He wasn’t wrong. Ryan said, because he was at a loss, “fuck you.”

Brendon sang back and nothing in his tone was malicious; it was like he was returning a compliment, “fuck _you_.”

Ryan couldn’t think of anything else to say than—and it wasn’t true, “I don’t like you.”

Brendon shrugged. “Okay. I didn’t ask you to.” 

Ryan didn’t understand happy people. 

“Well—” Brendon clapped. “Nice seeing you, Ghost, but I have—”

And that hit Ryan as he snapped, “my name isn’t fucking Ghost, you fuck!”

Brendon wasn’t fazed. He asked, “okay. Well, what is it? You’ve never offered to tell me.”

Which was true; it had never occured to Ryan to give the freak in the graveyard his name. He had been so caught up in the moment he had all but forgotten he had one. But then he thought to himself, this was some random freak in a graveyard, should he really be giving his name out? So he tried to lie and say that his name was Jon but before he could get past the first syllable, Brendon interrupted. 

“Lie.”

Okay, what the fuck was up with this guy?

“That’s a lie, that’s not your name,” Brendon said, and—yet again—he wasn’t wrong. 

“You didn’t even let me finish,” Ryan replied. 

“Didn’t need to.” 

Brendon’s smile had shifted and his eyes were increasingly dark. Ryan couldn’t help but think about the layers to those eyes, the way they shifted and changed, the layers to this kid. Ryan felt like he had seen two so far, the two-dimensional happy and the dangerous black eyes and, suffice to say, he wondered how many more there were beneath the surface. 

“I could sense it,” Brendon went on, “I can sense these sorts of things. Got an, uh, eye for it, if you will.”

That sounded rehearsed. It sounded like Brendon had heard someone say that to him before and was mimicking it. An impressionist. Ryan wondered to himself who it was that said it. 

Ryan took a breath to make sense of things. “Fine. Y’know what? Fine. My name is Ryan. It’s Ryan.” And then for good measure, he added, “fuck you then.”

Brendon waved his hand for more. Asked for more. 

Begrudgingly. “Ross.”

“Ryan Ross,” Brendon purred and, damn, that sounded… that sounded half decent coming out of his mouth. He stuck his hand out. “Well then, it’s a real pleasure to meet you, Ryan Ross.”

And Ryan kept himself from saying the pleasure was all his. 

Brendon made an odd expression as their hands parted and he said, “Damn, your fingers are gonna fall off.”

Ryan blinked in alarm and turned his eyes to his hands. “What? No, they’re not.”

“Here.”

Ryan looked up to find Brendon shucking off his rabbit fur gloves with utmost seriousness before handing them over. Ryan gaped because… because really? He just spent the last ten minutes being a complete asshole and this guy was going to give him the—extremely expensive—gloves off his hands. 

Instantly, Ryan stepped back and protested, “huh? No. No, I couldn’t just—What the fuck? I don’t know you—”

“Take ‘em,” Brendon said and it wasn’t a suggestion. “I heard your speech, dumbass, remember? I know you’re broke. Take the charity.”

Which embarrassed Ryan, because he wasn’t the kind to take charity. Or, he tried not to be. But there he was with Jon Walker posing as his benefactor. He couldn’t have another one. “I don’t need anything from—”

“From anyone, you take care of yourself, yada yada, your fingers are two hours away from no longer being fingers. Take the fucking gloves, Ghost.” Brendon shoved them into Ryan’s unawaiting hands. And so Ryan accepted them. He didn’t really want to go on being an asshole. His anger was subsiding a bit. Brendon’s smile seemed to have that effect. 

He slid the gloves onto his hands and was bewildered by how soft they were. Fuck, they must have been truly expensive. He felt so fucking stupid wearing those things. They in no way belonged on his person. But they felt so warm… 

He mumbled, mostly to himself, “wow.”

He was ashamed Brendon heard as he said, “no problem. It’s a pleasure.”

Ryan kept turning his hands over and over, admiring the sleek leather and white fur. And then he found the P, bold and bright on the wrist of his right hand. The mysteries just kept coming, didn’t they? The ever intriguing Brendon Urie. 

“What’s the P stand for?” he wanted to know. 

Which apparently he shouldn’t have asked because for the next two minutes he and Brendon went through an awkward dance—not nearly as choreographed as Cassie and Jon—Brendon trying to convince him that the P stood for different forms of ‘penis’ and really? How many terms for penis did this guy _know_?

Finally, Brendon said that it stood for his middle name, Patrick, but that was a lie too. Ryan knew that was a lie. So he said, “alright, alright. Don’t tell me. Mystery is fun. I’ll make something up.”

There were tears in his eyes from laughing. Brendon was funny. Or, maybe dick jokes were funny. He couldn’t tell yet. He would need more time with Brendon to figure it out.

Brendon prompted, “write me a story?” and in some cultures that might be considered a flirtation. 

Ryan agreed that he would. And he wanted to. He honestly wanted to write the Brendon Urie story. It might be worthwhile. Brendon Urie seemed to be. But before he could say that, or something to its effect, Brendon was checking his phone and claiming that he had to leave. 

Ryan would have thought he was lying except for the way his black eyes changed to apologetic and his brows arched up in sympathy. And so they said their brief goodbyes, Ryan watching the way Brendon’s demeanor changed all because of a text. 

Who was texting him? 

But he wouldn’t get to know. Wasn’t his business after all. 

So he turned heel down the street and disappeared back into the bustle of Downpour. But, to be honest, his day had been made a little less shitty as the greasy stench enveloped him. 

He would have to tell Spencer about the interaction. He had been worrying himself about what he was going to tell Spencer about his life in Esteban when Spencer inevitably asked. But now he wouldn’t have to worry! He could distract with tales of Brendon Urie. Start crafting his story. Brilliant. 

He sent up a silent thank you to Brendon, wherever he was headed. 

After getting lost twice, he finally managed to find Spencer’s apartment and, wow, was it shit. Not as bad as Ryan’s place in Esteban but it was no one-story family house owned by Jon Walker owned by Cassie Vandenboom. No, it was just an ordinary apartment for an ordinary little man. 

Third floor, fifty-sixth room. 

Ryan rang the doorbell six times because he was a terrible person. 

The moment he heard footsteps advance from inside, he regretted coming. But, it was Spencer or the church and Brendon was no longer an option— 

The door opened. 

Yeah, Ryan much prefered Spencer. 

Much preferred the way his eyes bugged out of his head and he staggered back a step, a hand going for the doorframe to keep himself steady. 

“Ryan,” Spencer’s voice came from far away as his blue eyes landed on Ryan in his doorway. “You came.”

Ryan smiled, flat. “Of course I did. You think I’m gonna let my old man have a funeral of one? Him and the casket? C’mon. I’m a better man than that.”

“Right, right, yeah,” Spencer breathed. The tone didn’t convince Ryan he believed it. His eyes were shooting over Ryan’s body hurriedly, as if trying to soak it all up. The ribs and the fur gloves. Like he just couldn’t believe what was in front of him. 

Ryan certainly couldn’t believe what was in front of _him_. 

Spencer Smith, thinner than he used to be, the makings of a beard inhabiting his face. He was dressed comfortably, a pullover and jeans, accompanied by bare feet. He didn’t look poorly. Not by any stretch. But he looked different, older, and Ryan wasn’t so fond of change. 

“Wow,” Spencer said, “you look… I mean, you’ve… You look different.”

“Well it’s been seven years,” Ryan returned and grinned to make sure Spencer knew he wasn’t being an asshole. He gestured to his own curls. “Hair cut, after all. Does wonders.”

Spencer tried to laugh. “Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“And you too?” Ryan tried to prompt, bobbing his head. “Really seems to frame your face. Props.”

Spencer made a small sound and absently touched his features like he didn’t know he had them. His voice was small and surprised. “Thank you.”

Ryan didn’t know exactly what he was meant to say to that so he tried, “by the way, so you know, it’s fucking frigid out here so any time you want to—”

“Oh!” Spencer jumped into action and pulled the door open further so that Ryan could dip his head and slink inside, a snake into the rabbit’s den, the warmth of Spencer’s house swallowing him up as he entered. 

“Huh,” Ryan voiced without meaning to as he kicked his boots off next to the door and wandered through the small apartment. It was quaint… cute. 

There was fluffy carpet in the living room, a television atop a yellow dresser. A bookshelf tucked into the corner of the room stuffed to bursting with thick, crumple-paged novels. Ryan stepped further inside and found it was an apartment of four rooms; a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. It was a sweet little place and it looked like a home. 

Ryan sort of hated it.

“Nice place,” he said and turned back to face Spencer who was still planted in the doorway. 

“Yeah uh, thank you,” Spencer mumbled and glanced at the floor. He didn’t seem to like having Ryan in his living room. “Can I… can I get you anything? To drink maybe?”

Ryan thought on it. He asked, “whatcha got?”

“Uh, wine?” Spencer suggested and Ryan snorted. 

“I’m not your evening date; do you see me in a cocktail dress?” Ryan waved at his jeans, button-down, and gloves. “C’mon, just get me a beer or something, man, I’m not fussy.”

He was defintetly fussy, if his conversations with Brendon proved anything. 

Spencer agreed with a smile and wandered to the kitchen to retrieve such. Ryan would have followed him but he elected to further explore the bookshelf that had caught his eye. He reached out to thumb through the books, pulling a copy off the shelf. 

He didn’t check the title but he flipped through the pages and read the first line he saw aloud, “‘I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.’”

“ _The Princess Bride_ , William Goldman.”

Ryan turned his head to notice Spencer walking back in from the kitchen, two beers in hand. Ryan asked, “what?”

“The book.” Spencer bobbed his head as he drew nearer. “It’s called _The Princess Bride_.”

Ryan closed the book back to the front and found that was indeed the case. He quirked a brow as he slid it back onto the shelf. “You know all these books by heart?”

“No.” Spencer reached him. “But you just read a pretty fucking famous line, so I did know that.”

“Just flipped to a random page.” Ryan accepted the beer that was handed to him. 

“Huh.” Spencer cracked his open and offered the opener to Ryan, who declined. “Good choosing.”

“Chance is a kind woman.” Ryan used the bottom of his shirt to twist the cap off. “Coors Light? Dude, you have shit taste in beer.”

He took a sip and Spencer snorted. “No, my _pocketbook_ has shit taste in beer.”

Ryan laughed appreciatively. He loved a good poor joke. He made them constantly. “So banking wasn’t working out? Jon told me you’re working in a casino?”

Spencer’s face soured a bit but he didn’t argue. “Yeah, y’know… Old man and I had a falling out.”

“Know how that is,” Ryan hummed. “What happened?”

Spencer shook his head and sipped his beer to keep from talking. He swallowed painfully before he said, “difference of opinion. Kid stuff too. Like we were toddlers fighting on the playground over a toy truck… Pointless.”

“Huh.” Ryan didn’t press it. 

“And you?” Spencer turned the attention to him. “Still writing?”

“Trying to,” Ryan responded.

“Journalism stuff?” Spencer wanted to know. “Or have we moved to fiction?”

Ryan coughed and peered to the side. “No, still writing the truth.”

Spencer laughed. “What’s that mean?”

“Means who writes fiction?” Ryan chortled to himself. “No one but people who can’t make it in the real world. Escapism. Lazy if you ask me. Cowardly.”

“Just because it’s not real doesn’t make it not true,” Spencer replied, admiring the glass of his beer. 

“What book’d you get that from?” Ryan wanted to know and Spencer chuckled, shaking his head. 

“Just something I’ve picked up.”

Ryan traced his eyes over the books, stacked high and worn. Most looked to be fiction. Ryan wasn’t so much a fan. Not that he didn’t admire writers’ talents but… fiction was just lying through a different voice, wasn’t it? Ryan was terrible at lying. 

“Y’know I’ve never read _The Princess Bride_ ,” Ryan hummed. 

“Yes, you have,” Spencer said and Ryan turned his way. “We read it for seventh grade English.”

“Did we?” Ryan repeated, utterly taken aback. “I must have forgotten.”

“We did.” Spencer was smiling. “But, eh, it happens. I don’t remember half of what we did in school. You’re allowed to forget things.”

“Yeah…” Ryan wasn’t pleased with that. “Sounds like a good book though, hate I don’t remember.”

“It’s great,” Spencer replied.

“Good quote.”

“About life not being fair?” Spencer asked. 

Ryan shook his head. “About love being the best thing in the world behind cough drops.”

Spencer laughed again, loud. “Yeah, you would know.”

“I get colds easily.”

Spencer rolled his eyes and drank his beer carefully. 

“You know I wouldn’t have come if you hadn’t called. To Downpour,” Ryan said and directed his eyes back to the bookshelf. It was easier to look at dusty books than it was to stare at Spencer’s calculating eyes. “So thanks for that, I guess. It was nice seeing Jon.”

“How _is_ Jon?” Spencer asked instantly, his eyes widening. It hadn’t registered to Ryan yet that Spencer and Jon didn’t talk very much anymore. He kept forgetting it was the future. They weren’t dumb teenagers cheating off each others’ notes anymore. 

“He’s good,” Ryan said. “Or, from what I can tell he is. Belongs to a pretty little girl named Cassie.”

“Yeah, yes, I know Cassie.” Spencer nodded. “They’re sweet.”

Ryan thought of the two of them being painfully in love that morning and he scowled. “They _are_.”

“And… you, then?” Spencer’s eyes never left Ryan for a second. 

This time Ryan didn’t follow and he pivoted his feet. There was about two feet of floor that seperated Spencer and he, both on one end of the bookshelf or the other. “What _about_ me?”

“Do you… _belong_ to someone?” Spencer asked and he didn’t seem to like the phrase. “Some pretty little girl?”

Ryan was taken aback and he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “I’m gay; didn’t you know?”

Apparently Spencer had not known as his eyes went twice their size and he straightened profusely. He floundered. “No I—I never knew that—since when?” 

Ryan scoffed. He wasn’t offended. Yet. “Since I came out of the womb, asshat”

Spencer laughed, nervous and loud, but there wasn’t disgust or concern by any means in his face, only shock. It occurred to Ryan then that Spencer might have been disgusted. He had no idea how Spencer felt about that. They hadn’t talked since they were teenagers. What if Spencer was disgusted by it? That would be awkward. And disappointing.

“Well… huh.” Spencer blinked. “I didn’t know.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said but it wasn’t an apology. 

“When did you come out?” Spencer asked and Ryan snorted eagerly at that. Like he was going to name a date and time off his calendar and they were going to celebrate his ‘coming out day’ every year and buy him a cake that said ‘congrats, you like cock!’ 

“Never?” Ryan kept smiling. “I didn’t like… have a thing. I just am.”

“Does Jon know?” Spencer asked.

“Of course Jon knows.”

“Oh.” Spencer frowned. “Okay.”

Ryan realized that may not have sounded so great. May have too much resembled, ‘Jon’s my friend and gets to know my secrets but you don’t.’ 

“So,” Spencer started and it seemed like he was trying to change the subject. “Do you have a… a boy you… _belong_ to?”

Ryan smiled. “No.”

Spencer asked, confused, “have you… ever? Had a boy you—”

“Just stop saying ‘belong to,’” Ryan said, chuckling, “it’s obviously making you uncomfortable.”

“Right…”

“No, to answer your question,” Ryan returned and he ran a finger over one of the book's spines, holding his beer at his side. “Never had a boy.”

“Then how do you know you’re gay?” Spencer asked, and of course he would ask. Ryan hung his head. He really thought they were doing well. “Maybe you just haven’t found the right—”

Ryan snapped his head up instantly and said, “Spencer, I’m gonna need you to not finish that sentence, okay, buddy?”

Spencer shut his mouth. He knew they didn’t call each other ‘buddy’ anymore.

“I’m gay, I like dick, all good?”

Spencer tinted a slight shade of pink in the cheeks but merely nodded. Smart on him for not saying anything else. “Yeah, all good.”

There was an obvious lull in the conversation and tension settled in the air while Ryan kept thumbing over the books, trying to distract his mind. He watched the black fingers of the gloves trace and fiddle and he paused, staring at the leather. 

He wondered briefly if Brendon Urie was gay. He didn’t know. It hadn’t come up in their brief two conversations where Brendon cracked stupid, eerie jokes and Ryan was an asshole. Someone had texted him, made him look afraid. Possibly a lover. Possibly someone he belonged to… 

Why was Ryan’s mind doing this? What was this train of thought? This was pointless. 

He shook his head to ease his mind. 

“You ever been to Freemont?” his mouth said before his brain stopped it. 

Spencer gave him a look. “Freemont? What’s that got to do with—”

“I met a guy,” Ryan informed, “from there and I was just—I haven’t been to the area in a while and I was wondering what it was… I mean what it was like now.”

Where did Brendon live? Did he have a bookshelf like this one? Books he could quote by heart? 

“Bunch of cow pastures and shit,” Spencer said, shrugging, “I haven’t been out there recently. Houses are a mile apart, no one talks to anyone. Bunch of hicks down there, freaks. Where’d you meet the guy?”

“Graveyard, my grandpa,” Ryan said. He thought about the church he was supposed to be at. Maybe he could get Spencer to take him. He didn’t want to go alone. But he didn’t want to go with someone either though. Not someone he was close to. That would be awkward. “He was uh—Accused me of being a ghost.”

“Freak,” Spencer said which was exactly what Jon had said but Ryan found himself being mad at the both of them.

“No, he was—” Ryan fidgeted— “It was just a point. I looked like a ghost.”

Spencer didn’t seem to understand so the conversation ended there. Ryan panicked at that because that had been the only conversation he was planning. 

He drank his beer nervously. 

“Brendon Urie,” he blurted, “you ever heard the name?” 

Spencer gave him a calculated look. “Uh. Urie? Yeah, I know the name.”

Ryan’s eyes went big. He hadn’t been expecting that answer at all. He snapped his head to the side. “What? Really?”

“Yeah,” Spencer replied, watching Ryan in confusion. “ _Urie_? Like Boyd and Grace Urie?”

Ryan shook his head because he didn’t recognize the names. Though why he would, he didn’t know. 

“Oh, damn sad thing,” Spencer said, “a couple that died… I don’t know, six… eight years ago, maybe?”

Ryan gaped. “ _Died_?” 

“Yeah, some mysterious thing or something.” Spencer shrugged. “You’d have to ask Jon, he’s the lawyer.”

“He said he didn’t know the name,” Ryan mumbled. 

“Oh. Huh.” Spencer wiped his nose. “Guess I must be wrong.”

He seemed to notice then that his beer was empty and he excused himself to get a new one. 

Ryan stood there on the fluffy carpet in Spencer’s tiny sitting room and stared at leather gloves on his own fingers that weren’t his and flipped through books that weren’t on his bookshelf. 

Thought about sleeping on a couch that wasn’t his own. 

So Ryan Ross was having a shitty day. A shitty life pretty much. His dad was dead; not ideal. He was sleeping on the couch of a former best friend. His other best friend didn’t seem to understand that he was gay. He was wearing rabbit gloves that weren’t his. He didn’t belong to anybody. And he still wasn’t worth a goddamn thing. 

All he wanted was his dumb, floppy-eared dog. 

He wondered if Grace and Boyd Urie really were dead. He wondered if Brendon had any relation. Big place like Downpour, most likely not. Still though, it was a curious thing. 

He thought about dying on a Thursday. 

And he muttered aloud, mostly to himself, “I gotta die young, man.”

“What?” Spencer had returned with a beer in hand. “You gotta _what_?”

Ryan tried to pretend he had meant to be heard. “So I sell more stories. Dead people sell stories. People only listen once you can’t say anything anymore, right?”

“William Goldman sold plenty of stories and he wasn’t dead,” Spencer said as he neared. 

“Who?”

Spencer rolled his eyes. “ _The Princess Bride_.”

“Oh.” Ryan blinked sluggishly and drank. “Right. Knew that.”

“No you didn’t.”

“No I didn’t.” Ryan wet his lips. “But if I die young, I’ll sell more books. Dead people sell books. And I wanna sell books. Thus, I die.”

Spencer rolls his eyes hard again. He groaned, “Ryan, _no_ ”

“Why not?” Ryan asked in exasperation. “It’s foolproof. It’s the only way I can be famous.”

“Famous?” Spencer asked. “What’d you mean, famous? You don’t have to die to become famous.”

Ryan grunted, “you do in my world.”

Spencer acted like there was a bad taste in his mouth. It was probably his shitty beer choice. “Why would you _want_ to be famous?”

“Why would you not?” Ryan retaliated. “Don’t you wanna be, I don’t know, worth something?”

_Don’t you want to belong to someone?_

Spencer didn’t seem to understand. “I’m worth plenty without having my face on a billboard.”

Ryan peered intently at the bookshelf. “You don’t understand my vision.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Spencer gave him a long, concerned look. “Ryan… don’t die.”

Ryan sighed. “I’ll try not to, man, but I can’t make any promises. Gotta make a living somehow.”

Because the only way he can think of to make a living is to die.

Spencer didn’t seem to have the same mindset so he just grunted to himself and drank his new beer. 

Ryan checked his watch to find that it was around seven. He didn’t want to be walking around in Downpour in the dark; no one was that dumb. He glanced up at Spencer. “What Casino do you work at?”

“Huh? The Felicity.”

“Sounds like a strip club.”

Spencer snorted. “You’d like that.”

Ryan stared at him for a second. Spencer didn’t seem to get it. “N-no. No I wouldn’t.”

It seemed to hit Spencer then that scantily clad women wasn’t what got Ryan excited and he fumbled. Ryan didn’t even try to listen to his excuse. 

“I’m gonna head out, huh?” Ryan said and he set his half empty beer on the bookshelf beside _The Princess Bride_. “And maybe I’ll swing by and see you at work?”

“Oh. Yeah, that’d be nice,” Spencer said, sounding afraid, and followed Ryan across the fuzzy carpet to watch him slip his boots on. Ryan barely waited a second more to pull the door open, only to discover a heavy sheet of rain had started to fall. 

Why hadn’t he heard it? Must have been too preoccupied with Freemont Freaks and death days.

“Damn,” Spencer said, staring out at the rain.

“A downpour in Downpour,” Ryan deadpanned. “Poetic.”

“You’re not really going out without an umbrella, are you?” Spencer asked as Ryan started to the door. 

“Eh, nothing I’m not equipped for. Plus, I’m only walking a few blocks.” Ryan shrugged. “No big deal.”

Spencer didn’t object anymore but he watched Ryan nervously as he started outside. He called, “don’t drown.”

Ryan laughed as he stepped into the cascading water. Only a second and he was surrounded by it, dripping and running across his skin, coating him clean over. Something like washing it away, a baptism of sorts. If Ryan was religious, that was. Could be a metaphor or some shit.

He turned back to Spencer, feeling the cold bullets of rain cover him. He smiled and before he left, completely serious, he said, “I’m gonna.”


	6. Let Me in on a Lover's Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's someday!

By the time Brendon got home, the sun had sunk completely from the horizon, the sky was dotted with angry little stars, and the bottle of Merlot that had been left on the kitchen table was, unsurprisingly, empty. 

He eased himself inside the kitchen, closing the screen door silently behind him as he entered the dark house, the lamps off so the only source of light was that which filtered through the windows from the dull moon. He tugged off his coat and hung it up on the back of one of the dining chairs as he kicked out of his boots, scanning the room for any sign of life. 

“Dallon?” he called quietly.

No response. 

Brendon let out a small sigh and continued through the kitchen to find dirty plates stacked on the counter. He grunted as he reached for them, “you couldn’t even bother actually putting them in the sink? It’s two feet away, man.”

He put the dishes in the basin, ran some water over them, and contemplated his role in the world. Not seriously, but his body ached and his skin felt dirty and really all he wanted was another shower but first he had to clean the fucking dishes. 

Dallon’s dishes’ cleanliness took priority over his own. 

Presumably, based on the dirty plates and the empty bottle of wine, things with Breezy had not gone well. Brendon didn’t know if he was supposed to feel happy about that or not. Perhaps. He was always hoping the two would finally realize they hated each other and call things off. Because they did hate one another. He’d never understand why they kept pretending they didn’t. 

Breezy was borderline abusive to Dallon as far as Brendon was concerned. Calling him names, snapping, talking down to him, guilt-tripping. Brendon wouldn’t stay in a relationship with someone who treated him like that. 

He bumped his bruised side into the edge of the table in the dark as he was reaching for the bottle and winced.

Brendon would never treat Dallon like Breezy did. He _didn’t_. And Dallon didn’t treat him with anything less than respect. 

Brendon dumped the empty bottle of wine in the trash before heading through the living room to the bedroom. 

The bedroom that was used, of course. They had the guest room as well, and as far as Breezy knew, that was where Brendon was still staying. That was where he _had_ been staying previously, before the disaster that was his current situation befell him. 

It hadn’t always been the plan to live with Dallon. He’d only been staying at their place the last year, so he only caught the tail end of their marriage. Only caught the bad parts. Maybe before he came around, they really were in love. Maybe he was the one who ruined it. 

Originally, he had planned to crash on Dallon’s couch for a month before he found a new place. He was sort of… low on funds. Ran through his inheritance. But he got good use out of it. Eighteen to twenty-three; five years of survival on that. 

And then it ran out. 

And he moved in with his best friend and his wife. 

And then he watched their marriage fall apart for six months. 

And then he watched Breezy leave and Dallon weep. 

And then he moved into her place in their bed. 

_You’re a fucking whore is what you are. Fucking husband stealer,_ he berated himself as he trailed sullenly to the closed door. He was so tired. He wanted to lie down. He’d had a… a day. There weren’t words. He had had a _day_. 

Not that he really _was_ a husband stealer. He wasn’t, honest! He and Dallon hadn’t started up their little… whatever it was that they were doing… until after he and Breezy had finally split. Granted it was within the following two days and during Breezy and Dallon’s rocky excuse for a marriage, Brendon was the one that poured him glasses of wine and entertained him with jokes and flirtatious remarks during the nights Breezy was away. 

It was always hinted at—never spoken—so it wasn’t really a massive surprise when the day after Breezy packed her things and moved out, Dallon kissed Brendon on the couch. 

Wasn’t a surprise to Brendon, anyway. It was always what he was working up to.

Dallon always liked to act like he was surprised after they did things. Would always laugh awkwardly or wipe his hair back with a disbelieving shake of the head or say, out of breath, “wow, I can’t believe we just did that” but Brendon never instigated it so how could Dallon be the one caught off guard?

Brendon didn’t make first moves. That wasn’t in his nature. 

Brendon flirted and he teased and he made sly touches but he didn’t _act_. No, no, no. He hinted, set the bait, and then he waited for further action to be taken by the other party. It was always what he had done. 

So he flirted, and once a week or so, when he felt like it, Dallon would push him up against something and that would be that. Brendon was dumb for wanting it to be anything more. He didn’t _need_ for it to be anything more. Should have been happy with what he had.

Breezy didn’t know about it; their… little affair or what have you. And she wouldn’t ever get to. That was rule number one. Fight club.

Brendon pushed open the bedroom door to find the room bathed in deep black, all the lights turned out and the blinds closed. But even so, he managed to distinguish the lump beneath the blankets that signified Dallon, sleeping peacefully. 

Brendon exhaled at the sight and he took a beat in the doorway to stand there, a hand braced on the frame, watching the covers rise and fall with each of Dallon’s breaths. And he hated that the sight made his body stop aching for even a second and the tension drain from his shoulders. He hated Dallon for it. 

He crept into the bedroom, careful not to wake his friend, before slipping into the bathroom to clean the remaining Downpour stench from him. He always showered in the hotel after he was with Pete but he liked a brief cleanse at home too. Just a baptism in his own bathroom with a showerhead he was familiar with, the same soap he used every day, the same water pressure he was used to, the same shower that Dallon and he would—

He felt comfortable in his own shower, that’s all that needed to be said. 

He didn’t use soap, just dropped his clothes into the laundry basket in the corner and stepped into the cascade of warm rainfall, letting it roll over his body, washing away the smell of grease and oil. Fuck, it felt good. He closed his eyes tight beneath the spray and released a shaky breath. 

It had been _a day_. 

But Brendon was good at life, by dammit. He knew life. He’d be fine by tomorrow. He always was. 

Ten minutes later and he was exiting the shower in a new towel and brushing his teeth over one of the two sinks and looking in one of the two mirrors of a couple’s bathroom. He stared at himself in the glass, his slick black hair hanging over his forehead and his deep black eyes. 

“You know,” he said to the mirror, gesturing his toothbrush at it, “you’re a very good looking man.”

“Why thank you,” his reflection said back and he rinsed his toothbrush off in the sink, “you’re too kind.”

“It’s true.” He noticed the shadow of stubble that marked his jaw and his smile faded. “I am…”

He peered deeper at his reflection and thought about Pete holding his chin and his neck and commenting on his unshaven face. His fingers twitched as they followed the path Pete’s hands had taken and then he pulled them back, angry at himself, and went for the razor. 

Only took him five minutes to make his face clean again and once it was, he spent a long time holding his smooth cheeks in both hands and staring at his own face in the mirror.

“It’s dumb that you’re doing this,” he told his reflection.

His reflection said, “absolutely. Only people in movies do this. You’re a real person.”

“Right.” He wiped over his face with his hand. “I’m a real person.” 

He dressed in plaid pajama pants and a white t-shirt. Usually, he would go to bed shirtless but the red marks at the base of his spine took away that option.

He turned off the light to the bedroom when he reentered and he tried to be as sneaky as possible as he slipped into the double bed, hoping not to wake Dallon, but his body had barely touched the covers when Dallon’s groggy voice groaned, “Bren?”

Brendon cursed himself in his head but out loud he replied, “uh-huh. I’m here, Dal. It’s me.”

Dallon shifted, rolling to the side so that he was facing Brendon. His blue eyes squinted open about halfway to try and look at him before closing again. “Where’ve you been?”

His words had a slight hitch to them and either he was very sleepy, very drunk, or a bit of both. Brendon got beneath the covers, answering as he did so, “Downpour, remember?”

“Oh right.” It was a breathy response. “What’d you do there?”

“Saw some friends,” Brendon said. 

He laid his head down on the pillow, resting on his side so that he could face Dallon, tucking his hands in prayer beneath his head. His eyes had adjusted to the dark and so he could almost clearly make out Dallon’s features. 

Dallon opened and shut his eyes several times sluggishly. “Have fun?”

“Yeah,” Brendon answered. Seeing Pete? Not so much. But seeing Sarah was alright and Patrick had always been a sweetie and— “Saw the ghost again.”

Dallon scrunched up his nose. “Ghost?”

“Remember?” Brendon asked, tracing over Dallon’s face with his eyes in the darkness, the shadows that painted him. “I mentioned to you that I saw a ghost in the graveyard this morning; well, I saw him again in Downpour.”

“The ghost? In Downpour?” Dallon repeated. 

“Yep.” Brendon nodded to himself. “His name’s Ryan. He’s kind of a bitch but you’d like him. Only had two conversations but uh…”

Brendon thought to himself about Ryan’s desperate frustration and his cold pink nose and blue fingers with Brendon’s—no Pete’s, no Ryan’s now—gloves slipping over them. 

“Seems like a good guy. Not… unfunny. Not unattractive. Not un-anything but not very… Not very usual, normal, either.” Brendon smiled as he looked at his best friend in his bed, no, Brendon was in _his_ bed not the other way around. “Eh, what’s normal ever gotten us?” 

“Nothing,” Dallon agreed in a grunt.

“Exactly,” Brendon emphasized with a laugh. “Nothing! The ghost in Downpour is as normal as anything else.”

“Right. A ghost in Downpour named Ryan.” Dallon hummed. His voice faded out slightly as if he were dozing off. “You goin’ crazy, Bren?”

Brendon smiled. “Maybe. But I have been for a while so… nothing new there.”

Dallon let out a shallow breath and his eyes stayed fluttered shut. He was quite handsome in the dark. Really handsome in the light. Brendon liked to entertain the idea of a world where Breezy didn’t exist and he wasn’t just some friend down on his luck to Dallon. Wasn’t just a means to get off. 

He and Dallon could date in that world. Really honestly date and live together, the same they were doing now but without the extra tension of Breezy thrown into the mix. It’d be a better world, he thought. Knew. 

His smile drained away slowly as he watched Dallon drift into sleep, his eyebrows angling up as if dreams were beginning to tiptoe around his head. In an attempt to soothe him, Brendon reached out a hand and sunk it into the mess of brown hair on Dallon’s head. 

Dallon let out a small sound, not approval or irritation, just a whine to signal he felt the hand on his head and then he stilled again. Brendon carefully carded his fingers through Dallon’s hair.

It was an odd thing, two men in bed together, only a foot apart, one raking his fingers through the other’s hair and it was certainly a form of comfort—a lover’s touch—but when the morning came, the other would chalk it up to a friendly gesture and nothing more. As far as Dallon was concerned, they were friends helping friends. Right. That’s all they were. 

A handful of minutes passed them by where Brendon stayed wide awake, his eyes fully open, petting Dallon’s hair while Dallon lay there, breathing in deeply through his mouth, unmoving. And then he squeezed his eyes closed and moved barely, pulling the covers up further around him. 

“Bren,” he mumbled.

Brendon stroked his hair. “Uh-huh?”

“You awake?”

He simpered. “Uh-huh.”

Dallon sounded slightly distressed by the realization, his brow creasing even deeper although his eyes remained shut. “I left dishes on the counter.”

“I know, Dal,” Brendon soothed, “I cleaned them.”

Dallon settled. “Thanks.”

Brendon pushed Dallon’s unruly hair behind his ear as best he could but it kept sticking back up. He frowned in frustration. “Of course.” 

“Breezy was here,” Dallon whispered after a second. 

Brendon’s fingers stuttered. He kept his voice low and he couldn’t attempt to keep the sadness from it. “I know.”

“She uh—” Dallon swallowed— “She wants a divorce. I mean… I mean she _really_ wants one.”

Brendon’s fingers fully stopped their rounds and they hovered, strands of Dallon’s hair still tangled around them. He tried not to sound too hopeful. “She does?”

Dallon sniffed and Brendon hated how sad he sounded. “Brought over papers and everything.”

“Did you uhm, did you sign them?” Brendon wondered.

Dallon shook his head. “No. No. Couldn’t.”

Brendon wet his lips. “Why not?”

And the voice that Dallon answered with was pathetic. It was broken and when Brendon looked at his face, he half expected the man to actually be crying. “Because I love her.”

Brendon let his heart crack a little. “Oh. Right. I forgot.”

Dallon cuddled himself back into his pillow and the covers. Brendon resumed his petting of Dallon’s hair. Dallon whispered, “I drank all the wine.”

“I know.”

“Sorry.”

Brendon shut his eyes. “It’s alright. Don’t worry about it. I’ll run into town tomorrow and I’ll buy us some more. Not a hassle. Okay, Dal?”

Dallon sniveled again. He reminded Brendon of a child with the way he was acting. Although he usually was when he was drunk—which wasn’t often. It was a rare occurrence that Dallon drank more than two glasses of wine and allowed himself to be… _vulnerable_ wasn’t the right word, was it? Brendon was so bad with words. He rarely had the right ones. 

He stroked Dallon’s hair down over and over. It was probably more comforting to him than it was to Dallon. 

“What’re you gonna do…” Brendon asked hesitantly. “About… Breezy? And your marriage, what’re you gonna do?”

Dallon shrugged. “Dunno… Take it as it comes. Nothing else I can do.”

Brendon nodded. “Yeah… Right. Nothing.”

He used his fingernails to scratch over Dallon’s head and Dallon murmured, “mhm. Feels nice, Bren. Thanks.”

Brendon didn’t say anything. He merely resigned himself further to the task and kept on petting Dallon’s head, scratching and stroking at his hair and his scalp. A lover’s touch. What a world he lived in. What a fucking world, huh.

He listened to Dallon’s breath even out and he knew after a few minutes he was asleep. Slowly, Brendon slipped his fingers from Dallon’s hair and put them on his own stomach. He rolled over to the stare at the ceiling. 

And then he spent the next hour and a half trying to fall asleep. 

He woke up before Dallon in the morning—which was rare but not unheard of—and busied himself with making coffee and eggs all while resisting the urge to smash his face into one of the many cabinets around his head. 

It wasn’t until about thirty minutes later that Dallon emerged from the bedroom, hair a horrific mess, rubbing his eyes with both palms, shuffling on his bare feet. 

“Ah!” Brendon cheered, raising his coffee cup in greeting. “He has arisen!”

“Sh,” came Dallon’s hiss in reply, continuing to rub his face, “don’t yell.”

Brendon smiled despite himself and pushed a glass of water across the dining table for Dallon when he got close enough. “Drink up, honey.”

Dallon gave him a fake scowl as he accepted the glass and took a greedy sip. Over the rim he muttered, “thank you.” 

“Anytime,” Brendon returned, nursing his coffee with both hands. “S’what I’m here for.”

Dallon slowly sat across from Brendon, resting his chin on the tabletop, his water glass beside his head. He looked a bit like an idiot, if Brendon were honest, with his fucked up hair, sunken eyes, a deep grimace. But Brendon couldn’t help but smile at the look and that made _him_ the idiot.

He cocked his head to the side, watching Dallon pout and he asked, “you okay there?”

Dallon waited a minute before he shook his head. 

Brendon frowned, genuinely concerned. “Anything I can do?”

Dallon started to shake his head but he stopped and merely peered at Brendon a moment, his eyes flashing like he was trying to come to a conclusion. He wet his lips briefly before he said, hoarse, “dunno.”

Brendon chuckled as he stood from the table. “Well, let me know if you think of anything. I’m gonna go to the store in an hour or so. Maybe I can get you a tub of ice -cream to drown your sorrows in. S’what single ladies do.”

“Huh? The store?” Dallon asked. “What for?”

It occurred to Brendon then that Dallon had been drunk, and half asleep the night prior and most likely didn’t remember anything. Which was… Which made sense. He told Dallon, “last night I told you I’d go to the store and get us another bottle of Merlot.”

“Why?” Dallon asked, confused. “You don’t like Merlot.”

“Breezy does,” Brendon answered, putting his cup in the sink. “And apparently—based on last night—you do too.” 

Dallon groaned audibly and put his head in his hands. “Oh God. Don’t tell me.”

“It wasn’t like last time,” Brendon assured. 

Last time being one of the first times Breezy came for dinner and asked to take her remaining belongings with her, saying that she didn’t want any part of her remaining in the house. That time, Dallon had gotten drunk on a lot more than wine. And Brendon had suddenly become the ultimate object of his affection. Brendon had suddenly become worthy of long kisses, dirty flirtations, whispers in the ear as Dallon pulled him into the bedroom. 

If Brendon were being honest, he preferred a drunk Dallon. Drunk-Dallon purred and doted and offered compliments a sober Dallon would never entertain even the idea of. 

Last time, Dallon kissed him without being surprised by his own actions. 

Sober-Dallon always acted like it was a major mistake. Drunk-Dallon was a miscreant, an evil being. Sober-Dallon would _never_.

“Okay.” Dallon nodded as the news seemed to appease him. “When are you going?”

“Figured after I get dressed,” Brendon said before gesturing to his pajama pants and his t-shirt. “Isn’t exactly a look meant for the public.” 

He moved to run water into his coffee cup and the cascade of liquid nearly drowned out Dallon’s voice behind him. “I don’t know. I think you look good.”

Brendon turned off the sink. He glanced over his shoulder, a brow arched, an obvious invitation for Dallon to keep talking. 

Dallon smiled at him and there was a sheepish undertone. “You do. Look good. You shave?”

Brendon absently touched one side of his clean face. “Yeah.”

“It’s good.”

Brendon flashed a quick grin. “Thanks.”

He started to the bathroom but he didn’t get very far before Dallon had stood from the table and blocked his way. Well, ‘blocked’ wasn’t the right word. More just… residing in his path. Brendon could walk around him easily if he wanted to. But he didn’t, so he stopped in front of Dallon and glanced up at him. 

“Need something?” he inquired innocently, the implication anything but innocent. 

And then Dallon’s greedy fingers were in Brendon’s black hair, slipping past his ear to sink into the back of dry, messy hair and he didn’t move Brendon’s head to the side but instead tilted his own mouth to align their lips and kissed Brendon like he hadn’t had a second thought. 

Brendon’s body stiffened and he gasped in surprise at the sensation of Dallon’s warm mouth and his plush lips against Brendon’s own. A fully dressed kiss in the kitchen was a rare thing for them. A kiss initiated without a conversation to soften it. Odd.

A hand instinctively caught the collar of Dallon’s shirt and Brendon kept it trapped in his fist. So when Dallon pulled away, he could hold on and prove that once Dallon had been there.

Dallon let out a soft breath against Brendon’s mouth and his eyes were closed, his eyelashes over his cheeks that were deep red with blush, and Brendon felt himself sink into the moment—the important, astounding moment—his own eyes fluttering shut as he sighed back through his nose.

He liked being kissed without a precursor. 

Dallon’s breath was so hot and his lips were so smooth and Brendon shifted from his collar to his neck, feeling the soft flesh beneath his fingers. 

And then Dallon let out a scared chuckle—the same one he did before he always said, _I can’t believe we_ —as he parted from Brendon’s mouth, their noses bumping together, his hands resting on either side of Brendon’s waist, his trembling fingers trailing over the hem of his shirt.

Dallon opened his mouth and Brendon filled in a hundred different words he could possibly say. But what he actually said didn’t fit anywhere into the fantasy. “Breezy uhm… she wants to divorce me… officially.”

And the moment was gone. 

Brendon swallowed and his voice was hoarse when it left his throat. “Oh?”

Dallon’s fingers eased along his waist. He sounded like a heartbroken man. “Yeah and uh—Yeah. Talked about it over dinner when she was here.”

“But you didn’t sign the papers,” Brendon announced. 

Dallon’s brows creased, obviously surprised that Brendon knew. “Yeah, how did you—”

“You mentioned it,” Brendon said and he stayed stiff, “in bed last night.” 

Dallon’s face drowned a bit in realization. “Oh. But last night we didn’t—you and I didn’t—”

Sober-Dallon afraid of Drunk-Dallon’s antics. 

“Would it be bad if we had?” Brendon asked and he tried not to sound too accusatory. 

“Uh, well—” Dallon shook his head; he couldn’t find the words— “I was wasted last night.” 

“You were,” Brendon agreed. “So no, we didn’t have sex.”

Dallon stared at him for a second and then a small smile traced his lips and he suggested, tugging at the bottom of Brendon’s t-shirt. “Well… now, we could—”

And his fingers ghosted over Brendon’s back where three red claw marks were waiting to be discovered and Brendon jerked away. He hadn’t accounted for this. He usually had a week after Breezy visited. This hadn’t been on his radar. Fuck. 

Dallon couldn’t hold back the alarm in his features at Brendon stepping away from him. He asked, not one to be turned down—Brendon _had_ never turned him down before, “what are you doing?”

“I’m going to the store,” was all Brendon could muster to come up with and he tried to step past Dallon into the living room. 

He barely made it past when Dallon caught him roughly by the forearm and turned him around abruptly, Brendon stumbling with how fast he was tugged over. Brendon let out a gasp of surprise at being pulled so close, so fast, so hard and Dallon examined his features as if scrutinizing and he asked, “you’re leaving?”

Brendon scowled at him—trying to remain as relaxed as he could while snatching his hand away; he didn’t like being grabbed—and replied, “I am. Need anything from the store?”

“I need you,” Dallon replied sharply and Brendon snorted as he turned. 

“Go jack off in the bathroom, Dal,” he snapped, “you’ll get just as much out of it.”

And he got dressed in the bedroom and left.

For some reason, his hands were shaking. Probably the cold. But, even with the heat on in his car, they didn’t stop.

Granted, he didn’t drive to the store because, what the hell? He didn’t want to go buy more wine for Dallon to down when his wife gave him bad news and then fuck Brendon on the fucking couch and then feel bad about it but complain when he didn’t get it sober. What the fuck? Brendon was pissed. He was actually pissed. Brendon didn’t _get_ pissed; why was he pissed? 

Somehow he found himself driving to the graveyard of all places, parking in two parking places and storming to the gates like he had something to prove. He did, for all those who cared; he had a lot to prove. But he made sure to get to the graves before he started complaining. 

The sun was balanced in the middle of the sky and it was beautiful, the day, and the way that birds sang from trees and leaves rustled in the breeze, and hell, he might as well rhyme; the place was out of poetry. The grass sunk beneath his boots as he trudged up the hill to where his parents’ graves were located, two ugly headstones just like the rest. Slabs of rock embedded in the ground with fading letters. 

“You!” he shouted as he drew near, “it’s your fucking fault this is happening. Look at me! Look at me, you fuckers!”

He stopped in front of the matching graves, Grace and Boyd Urie together forever, even in the ground, their skeletons still holding hands beneath the dirt. And he pointed an aggressive finger at them. 

“Look what you’ve done. Why have you done this? Why did you do this to me?” 

He let out a shaky breath and sighed. He let his voice drop. 

“Why am _I_ doing this to me?” He pinched his nose. “Oh shit. I really am going crazy. Dal’s right. I’m a Freemont Fucker Freak, aren’t I? Wow.”

He slowly sank down to the grass, sitting cross-legged on the ground, distraught. 

He stared down at the old dirt. Years old. No flowers had ever been laid there. Not even by his siblings. After their parents died, and too angry at Brendon to stay, his brothers and sisters had all fled. He was eighteen, they were far older. They left him. Although he supposed that was what happened when your least favorite sibling got all the inheritance you were rightly due. You got pissed. 

Stared at the tombs that stuck up from the ground, ugly little grass blades licking at the base of the stones. He wondered what it would look like years from then. How the letters would fade, or the grass would grow, or the stone would crack. How his parents’ skeletons would break and rot away. 

It had been seven years. Maybe they were gone by now.

Brendon hung his hands in his lap and stared at them. And he said, “I want so badly to blame you, y’know. _Fuck_ , I wish this were your fault.”

But he knew it was his own. 

And so he couldn’t do anything but sit there, pissed out of his mind at himself and his parents’ skeletons, sitting like a dumbass in the dirt, ruining his perfectly good jeans. 

He thought about his parents’ funeral. A joint one. Felt lazy, in his opinion. Mason—as the eldest—was in charge of things but Kara was the oldest girl which meant that it inevitably fell to her. And she picked a joint funeral where one by one, all five of the Urie children in order of age got up on a stage and told some dumb story about how much their parents meant to them. 

And when it had come to Brendon’s turn, eighteen years old and shaking because he knew more than the others, he had stood in a church and said to a congregation that hated him because he didn’t come to service more than once a year, “thank you for being here. My parents meant a lot to a lot of people and I know they will be dearly missed.”

He had been careful not to say it aloud but the second part of that sentence was, _dearly missed but not by me._

And that had been about it. The rest of the speech was in autopilot mode and he didn’t remember what he’d said. Wasn’t like it had been planned at all. He hadn’t had time to properly prepare; the same day he had had his first engagement with Pete so he was finding it hard to stand upright when he was on stage. 

“Freemont.”

Brendon stopped thinking. He blinked. Thought to himself, _no way in_ Hell _this is happening to me right now_.

“Hey, Freemont,” the voice said again. And yep, it was happening; his life was a travesty and God hated him.

He looked up, jaw hanging, to find—of course—Ryan Ross peering down at him, hands tucked in his pockets, and a smile sharply drawn on his not unattractive face. It was a damn good smile and it was only out of pure astonishment that Brendon returned it so easily.

“Ghost!” he exclaimed before catching himself. “I mean, Ryan, right?”

“Yep,” Ryan returned before sparing a glance between Brendon and the tombs he was sitting in front of. Ryan cracked his grin wider and said, “what? No fancy monologue to your dead relatives? Where’s your class?”

Brendon chuckled. “Sorry, no, I’ve said my peace.”

“Sure, you’re completely at ease,” Ryan said and he had one hip cocked out, his feet planted firmly. Those were old boots. “That’s why you’re a grown-ass man sitting in the mud in a graveyard. You don’t have any problems. I can see it now. You’re dandy.”

Brendon smiled up at him jeeringly without thinking. “Alright, what is this? You stalking me, Ghost?”

“Uh, it’s Ryan,” he pointed out, “and I’m pretty sure you’re stalking me.”

Brendon let his jaw fall open more. He laughed. “What! You’re the one that came up to me.”

“You’re the one that found me in the graveyard first,” Ryan returned, “and called me a ghost. And keep calling me that. Even though you know it’s not my name.”

“You’re the one that harassed me in Downpour,” Brendon shot back, eager. “Two strikes for you, buddy-boy, and only one for me.”

Ryan raised his hands from his pockets in surrender. “Got me there.”

“Uh-huh.” 

Brendon darted his eyes over Ryan and his worn jeans, button-down shirt, and heavy brown coat. Brendon’s own gloves were on his hands. Part of Brendon wanted to figure this out; the other part was fine with it as it was. Was fine with jeering at Ryan and waiting for him to get mad. Ryan was entertaining. 

“What’re you doing up in this part of the graveyard anyway?” Brendon mused. “Your grandpa is buried lower than this if I remember. Seems like you went out of your way to come say hi.”

“I figured I’d take a walk,” Ryan said and when Brendon narrowed his eyes, he laughed and protested, “Honest! And I just happened to stumble up on you, sitting here, in front of some graves, totally not having a crisis of some kind. Just normally sitting in front of graves as one does.”

“It’s a normal thing to do,” Brendon said. 

“Of course it is.” Ryan’s copper eyes flashed brilliantly in the sunlight. His hair was turned over by the wind. It had a bit of a curly quality to it, if Brendon was looking.

“You’re one to talk,” Brendon replied, “you really _were_ monologuing when I found you.”

“And I admit to that with pride.” Ryan’s smile was remarkably white. “I’m crazy. Really just batshit. You should be afraid. I may kill you.”

Brendon laughed. He was pleased with this. He was really, very pleased. Ryan was a decently funny guy. And it didn’t hurt that his white smile and copper eyes kept glinting above him in the light. “Y’know you’re a lot more fun in graveyards than you are in cities. I’m thinking it’s because it’s your home turf.”

Ryan’s returning chuckle was nervous and he eased his hands back into his pockets, ducking his head. Almost like he was shy. “Yeah uh… I get that I wasn’t really the n—”

“We’re grown-ass men,” Brendon interrupted, raising a hand, “please, God, don’t apologize to me like you pushed me over in the sandbox, huh?”

Ryan snorted. “Do you want the apology or not?”

Brendon pondered before he decided, “I’m alright.”

“Really?” Ryan asked. “Because it was gonna be a good one. I was gonna tell you what a shitty day I was having and that you seemed like you were having a good day and I resented you enough for it that I wanted to actually clock you in the face.”

“Oh,” Brendon voiced, pointing at his face, “this beauty?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, “I wanted to literally throttle you.”

“Well thanks for not doing that,” Brendon replied and quirked a brow.

“You’re welcome.” Ryan batted his eyelashes and carried on like it was nothing. Like he wasn’t making himself remarkably handsome when he brushed his hair back with a hand. “Anyway, I was going to tell you I was mad at you because you seemed like a happy person and I am a terribly _un_ happy person with a terribly unhappy little life and then we were going to have a real heart to heart moment in which you told me something tragic about your own past and that you’re secretly not happy either and then we would bond over our misery.”

“Ah.” Brendon nodded, humming, slightly alarmed. “Sounds gorgeous, hate you don’t get to do it.”

“Oh, me too.” Ryan smiled. He seemed at ease with what he had said. “It would’ve been beautiful. I was gonna pull out the tiny violin I carry with me at all times and play it for you to accentuate the emotion of the moment.”

Brendon laughed again and he couldn’t help it, gesturing to the mud beside him, offering Ryan to sit. “You got anywhere better to be?”

“Absolutely,” Ryan obviously lied as he came to join Brendon in the dirt, about a foot away from him. “But mud is so enticing. How could I resist?”

“A great cushion,” Brendon said. 

He turned to his side to map Ryan’s profile as he settled into the dirt, his knees folded up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs like a kid. His copper eyes narrowed on the graves of Brendon’s parents and if Brendon were paying closer attention, he would have pointed out how Ryan’s smile fell but he was too focused on those copper eyes glinting to notice a smile’s twitch. 

“So,” Ryan asked, “who’s your friend there?”

Brendon watched his profile carefully. “Plural.”

Ryan turned to look at him and the sun illuminated his entire face, making his hair shine golden. “Friends?”

“Parents,” Brendon admitted.

“Oh.” Ryan obviously swallowed and his throat bobbed.

“Yep.” Brendon bowed his head, gesturing with a hand to the graves. “Grace, Boyd. Mummy and Daddy. This is Ryan Ross.”

“You did _not_ call them that,” Ryan said with a smile to his side.

“What?” Brendon’s grin widened. “You don’t like Daddy?”

“Not in any setting,” Ryan returned. 

“Good, that’s how I test people.”

“You say Daddy and see who moans in public?” Ryan asked, bemused. 

“Yes and congrats, you passed!” Brendon let his smile stretch across his face and he didn’t miss the way Ryan’s eyes danced over it. Ah. So he wasn’t the only one who liked smiles.

“Thank you, it’s an honor,” Ryan replied. “But… I didn’t expect to be meeting your parents in this setting.”

Brendon cackled. “You expected to be meeting them in any setting?” 

Ryan shook his head but he didn’t reply, letting his laugh fizzle out before he asked, “so uh… how’d they uh, how’d they pass?”

He had an interesting voice. He spoke confidently, enough arrogance that Brendon wouldn’t be the only ego in the room but he diverted his eyes when he knew he was being watched which insinuated some insecurity as well. Brendon would have to learn more about that. He wasn’t the only one with secrets, hm.

“Car accident,” Brendon answered and, by that point, the words were so practiced they didn’t sound wrong.

“Damn…” Ryan shook his head. “Sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Ryan’s features shifted. “Why?”

Brendon shrugged and it was another test, really, these words. “Not a major loss, if I’m honest.”

Ryan appeared intrigued. “No?”

“Nope.” Brendon smiled at him. “Neither of ‘em. Weren’t the best.”

And that was the truth. He didn’t like his parents. Didn’t like their religion, their attitudes, their expectations and he certainly didn’t like it when they had tried to take him out of the will when he was eighteen. Hadn’t liked that one bit. 

“Y’know,” Ryan said, completely conversational, “my name isn’t really Ryan.”

Brendon snapped his head up in pure wonder. No, that couldn’t be right. He had already played this game with Ryan in Downpour. He knew when someone was lying. ‘Ryan’ was his name. He asked, bewildered, “it’s not?”

“It’s what I go by,” Ryan explained, smiling, “but my given name is George.”

Brendon grinned, completely thrown for a loop. “Really? That doesn’t fit you at all.”

Ryan laughed, such a pleased sound, and he agreed, “I know.”

“Do you just like the name Ryan better?” Brendon asked as they sat together.

Ryan sent him a glance from the corner of his eyes, holding one hand against his head to keep it on. “Sorry?”

“George,” Brendon elaborated with a wave of his own hand, “do you just not like the name? I mean it’s not even close to Ryan so… did you open a Baby Name’s book and pick your favorite, bing bang, that’s a rap people?”

“No, no," Ryan said, making certain not to look at Brendon. As if he feared looking. "My middle name is Ryan."

Brendon nodded, making an ‘o’ with his mouth. “You just like it more than George? Think it has a better mouth feel?”

Ryan snorted and shook his head. “No. It’s not that I like ‘Ryan.’ It’s that I don’t like ‘George.’”

Brendon stared. The plot thickened. “How come?”

“My dad’s name is George,” Ryan answered and there it was, the motive to this information.

Brendon nodded. It was coming together. “And you hate the man.”

“Thought it would make you feel better,” Ryan offered, “because you hated your dad.”

Brendon straightened his spine, shoulders back. Pride. "Hated that man. Hated, hated, hated." 

He sang the end, high pitched and bold, and Ryan caught himself on a laugh in response. Pleasure. Brendon grinned at him, as if he was successful because he had made Ryan Ross laugh. There was a certain success to it. Especially if Ryan was telling the truth about his unhappy little life. He wasn’t unfunny, wasn’t unattractive, but he was unhappy apparently. Brendon could fix that, he bet.

"Don't worry," he said after a moment, his tone taking on a seriousness, "you're allowed to hate your dad. You're allowed to hate whoever the hell you want. No judgment here."

Ryan snickered at him. "Well thanks, Brendon. For letting me know I'm not the only asshole in the world."

Brendon returned the expression. He liked Ryan saying his name. "Oh, of course. It's a real pleasure of mine. All this... acknowledging the asshole."

"Acknowledging the asshole," Ryan repeated, laughing hard. "Maybe think of something different to call it."

"What do you mean? That's perfect." Brendon retorted, scrunching his nose up. “What? You don’t like assholes?” 

Ryan kept laughing. God the sound that came from his mouth was harmonious. Brendon liked it. He liked it a lot. A good laugh, that man had. A good laugh, good smile. He was funny, attractive. And he seemed to like Brendon at least a little. 

Brendon thought about Pete’s exploring hands grabbing his chin and Dallon’s rough hands grabbing his forearm and he looked at Ryan’s hands neatly in placed in his lap wearing Brendon’s own gloves.

And his mouth asked, “d’you want my number?”

Ryan turned in alarm, his eyes going big at the question, and Brendon opened his own mouth in surprise and half of him wanted to say, _oh my god, who said that?_ but he kept at least some dignity. 

"Wow, I’m sorry; don’t know where that came from." He snorted awkwardly. “Ruined that moment, huh? Literally didn’t even ask if you were gay or single or anything, I just fuckin—” 

He hung his head, shaking it several times and then placed both his hands on his face and drug them down across his eyes, letting out a horrible groan.

Then, to his astonishment, Ryan laughed again, so easy, and his voice said, beside Brendon, "no, no. That was incredibly smooth."

Brendon glared at him. “Yeah. Kick me while I’m down.”

“No, no! It was smooth!” Ryan insisted and reached into his coat pocket as if he was going to retrieve something.

“I feel like you’re not being completely honest with me,” Brendon pointed out, watching Ryan toy with his pockets, creasing his brow. 

“I’ve never been completely honest with anyone. I’m a writer. Aha, there it is!" Ryan exclaimed as he finally fished the pen out of his pocket and showed the writing utensil to Brendon—as if to prove what it was; a pen—so he could admire it before Ryan reached out without permission and took him by the wrist. 

Brendon flinched barely when Ryan touched him but it was soft. Ryan held his wrist gently, his thumb over Brendon’s pulse point. And it felt different than Dallon and Pete and Brendon let out a breath, settling.

"Wow. You _are_ a writer. Carry a pen in your breast pocket," Brendon voiced softly as Ryan turned over his arm and clicked his pen cap theatrically before beginning to scratch black lines across the underside of his forearm. The touch was careful as it went over Brendon’s skin. “What’re you doing?”

Ryan smiled as he held Brendon’s arm out, admiring his own handwriting. He glanced up to Brendon with a wide smile. Proud and young. "I'm sure your number sounds good but mine sounds even better."

Brendon sat there for a second, staring at the scribble of ink on his arm, before he fixed Ryan with big black eyes. 

That same smile he liked so much came wide across Ryan’s face and he said, “by the way, yeah, I’m gay. And single. You’re welcome.”

Brendon laughed, truly out of sorts, and he looked down at the pen marks on his arm. "I hope this doesn't wash off before I can call you."

"It won't." Ryan shook the pen. "This baby's permanent ink."

Brendon laughed, loud and open, too loud for an empty graveyard but Ryan didn't seem to mind. Brendon’s laughter filled it up so it felt like the whole world was in that mud, in front of those tombs. Ryan laughed too but it was like a hum next to Brendon’s long, unbroken howl. They fit though, neatly.

“In that case maybe I’ll get it tattooed,” Brendon said a moment later, fakely thoughtful. Then, though, Pete or Dallon would see it so he would have to transfer it to paper as soon as possible. Couldn’t risk getting caught.

“Well, if you’re going to do that I should put my name on it.”

Brendon didn’t say anything, only offered his arm out to Ryan again and he smiled as Ryan scribbled five letters in thick block letters. G-H-O-S-T.

“Ghost?” Brendon read out. He snickered, beyond happy. 

Ryan grinned, pulling back from Brendon’s arm. He shrugged. “It fits me.”

Brendon’s smile broadened as they shared a look. He took one slow blink and when his voice came out it was low. "Then I'll call you."

Ryan’s voice was young, jovial. "And I’ll answer… if I feel like it, o’course."

Brendon snorted. “It’s _me_. I’m a Freemont Fucker Freak that calls you a ghost in graveyards. Trust me, you’ll answer. You’re too curious not to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


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